Will the scorched temples bring down General Varchenko of the Ministry of Internal Affairs? The head of the Ulyanovsk police, Yuri Varchenko, developed the alcohol business. MegaFon is joining forces in the fight against mobile scammers.

According to blogosphere and media reports, based on the results of a repeat inspection of the Ulyanovsk Regional Internal Affairs Directorate, the head of the regional department, Major General Yuri Varchenko, was given incomplete service compliance. The presentation of the “wolf ticket” to the chief police officer of the Ulyanovsk province was the result of high-profile scandals that shook the region and reached the federal center with a booming echo. It’s under Varchenko’s nose an entire underground empire was revealed for the production of counterfeit alcohol, which, as it turns out, was led by the deputy head of the regional police department, Colonel Eduard Osyanin, who acted, perhaps, not without the blessing and participation of his boss with general's shoulder straps. That's subordinates General Varchenko obviously, at the direction of the boss, they tried to hide the mass brutal reprisal of bandits from one of the local organized crime groups against truck drivers from the Stavropol Territory. Then horrifying facts of the daily practice of Ulyanovsk police officers were revealed, who surpassed their colleagues from other regions in the number of tortures, tortures, extortions, intentional and manslaughter of citizens. And, finally, the crown of this oil painting was the bloody realities of teenage crime in Ulyanovsk, which were revealed to the eyes of Russians, which, as it turns out, has long been reliably divided into spheres of influence not only by numerous adult organized crime groups, but also by much more ferocious children’s and youth brigades. The situation has gone so far, and the criminal nightmare in Ulyanovsk, with the connivance or even the participation of Varchenko’s law enforcement officers, has acquired such monstrous proportions that citizens began to take to the streets to protest against the dominance of bandits and lawlessness. Appeals from desperate city residents were sent to the Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Kolokoltsev, the Commissioner for Children's Rights in the Russian Federation Anna Kuznetsova and a number of politicians and representatives of federal authorities demanding to immediately intervene in the situation and save at least minor children from horror and mayhem .

The revealed terrible truth about what was happening in Ulyanovsk prompted dozens of federal politicians and social activists to make harsh statements. Director of the Research Center for Corruption Problems Sergei Sapronov said: “The fact that Ulyanovsk found itself in the grip of teenage gangs terrorizing the population, and most importantly, minor residents of the city, is entirely on the conscience of the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ulyanovsk region, Major General Yuri Varchenko, who turned out to be either unable to establish law enforcement work , or for some reason not interested in this.” The presence of serious problems with law enforcement in the region and the neglect of issues with juvenile delinquency were recognized by a State Duma deputy from the region, the head of the regional public reception of the chairman of the United Russia party Dmitry Medvedev in the Ulyanovsk region, and in the recent past the mayor of Ulyanovsk Marina Bespalova, political scientist, head of the “Political Expert Group” Konstantin Kalachev, international expert on problems of education and childhood Alexander Gezalov.

Obviously, for the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and for the federal center in general, what is happening in Ulyanovsk was an unpleasant surprise. The scale of the social problem associated with rampant crime and the incapacity of the local police, as well as the intensity of the ripening civil protest, are such that it is time to talk about a local political crisis in the region. There is no doubt that the scandalous events that are shaking the Ulyanovsk region today directly affect the confidence of citizens in all branches of the current government. After all, back in March of this year, speaking at an expanded board of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin warned police officers about the need to respond more quickly to citizens’ requests and work “not for reporting, but to increase trust in the authorities.” It was no coincidence that the head of state then linked the activities of law enforcement agencies with such a key criterion for political stability. There is no doubt that “internal affairs”, which are entrusted to the police and by which is understood a whole range of issues of a social nature, are becoming increasingly decisive in the current domestic political agenda. The work of law enforcement agencies is especially closely tied to the problem of trust in authorities in the regions. Far from the capitals, the population feels injustice and insecurity more acutely, linking problems of personal safety and ill-being not only with the shortcomings of the police, but also with the attitude of the authorities in general. Alarm bells began to ring out from the Ulyanovsk region even before a series of scandals involving teenage gangs, General Varchenko and his subordinates spilled out: the region’s trust ratings for all branches of government began to plummet.

In the recent elections, Ulyanovsk Governor Sergei Morozov despite numerous high-profile successes in investment policy, the creation of new jobs and entire industries, it suddenly faced a sharp drop in the level of confidence. The result of the campaign: although a victory in the first round, but with a modest 55%. But this result was ensured mainly thanks to the dexterity of political strategists and their well-chosen sparring partners. These are also called “spoilers”. If not for this, the creative Simbirsk governor could well have lost, as he did, for example, in Morozov’s native Dimitrovgrad, where he received only 25 percent of the votes, and his competitor was a communist Alexey Kuriny I got twice as much. At the same time, the same opposition candidate Kuriny in the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation was ahead of the chairman of the Ulyanovsk Regional Legislative Assembly committee on social policy, United Russia member Igor Tikhonov. What kind of “social policy” is there if at least 20,000 children and teenagers have become members of teenage gangs!? Such indicators should have at least alerted, if not truly alarmed, the current government. However, subsequent events put into a single puzzle the problems with trust in power on the part of Ulyanovsk voters and the more than modest results of the last elections.

But the presidential elections are at stake ahead, and the worsening situation with the failures of social policy and the oppression of teenage gangs, which the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Ulyanovsk region cannot or consciously does not want to resist, is guaranteed to provoke a further slide of the region into the opposition. Sociologists and experts on behalf of the internal policy department of the presidential administration have yet to analyze the sources of the Ulyanovsk protest phenomenon and the mechanisms of influence on it by causing failures in the sphere of “internal affairs.” But it is already obvious that the main negative result of the activities of General Yuri Varchenko as head of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Ulyanovsk region from 2013 to 2016 is that the policeman sent from Chukotka could not or did not want to understand the local realities and, through negligence or deliberately, released from the Ulyanovsk bottle of gin of mass teenage crime. The brutal and well-organized youth groups that today bring fear to the regional center are a powerful force not taken into account in any expert forecasts, capable of subjecting even the established political system to its destructive influence, and even more so of provoking any large-scale unrest and social crisis in the region. Those who are 15-17 years old today and who are united in vertically integrated criminal structures numbering tens of thousands of fighters armed with brass knuckles and bats, tomorrow will significantly increase their combat potential and will be able to attack the riot police chains, destroying houses and buildings along the way. shopping centers, looting and killing, raping and setting fires. The picture is familiar to us from the “Maidan”: a brutal crowd that is hammering at the unarmed “Berkut” with chains, pipes and fittings. The Ulyanovsk criminal underground, which recruited almost half of the younger generation into its ranks, and imposed tribute on the other half with impunity, has turned into a real fifth column, a time bomb that will certainly explode under the structure of the vertical of power. The ticking clock of this Ulyanovsk mine, carefully hidden by General Varchenko and his entourage, has already led to a fall in the ratings of the authorities in the region and sowed doubts, and even hatred, in the minds of voters.

What if tomorrow a new wave of protests brings to the streets not the varnished Moscow snobs, but embittered “animals” who simply have nothing to lose, who have long been afraid of neither pain nor the batons of riot police, do not recognize authorities and do not watch TV programs of Kiselev and Solovyov? What if tomorrow the new “Udaltsovs”, the new “Dmitry Ulyanovs” give up their peaceful criminal career and turn their anger on the authorities?

It is difficult to say how much time the federal and regional authorities have left to cut off the sparkling wires of the Varchenko mine clockwork, root out adult and teenage gangs, and restore stability and confidence in the future to the population. Apparently, the first step on this difficult path has already been taken: the decision taken to “incomplete official compliance” with General Varchenko was undoubtedly a political decision, and it demonstrates a principled attitude in opposing the negative processes that have overwhelmed the Ulyanovsk region.

A special commission of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs operates in Ulyanovsk, conducting an unscheduled inspection of the activities of the regional Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Ministry of Internal Affairs confirms information about the inspection, but does not comment on it, considering the inspection “ordinary” and “one of many.” Meanwhile, human rights activists believe that the appointment of the inspection could be a reaction to their repeated appeals to the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with complaints about unlawful or ineffective actions of the police and requests for a visit from Moscow auditors. What its outcome will be is still unknown, but a number of similar inspections in other regions ended in the resignation of heads of departments and even regional departments.

As Kommersant has learned, an unscheduled inspection of the activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Ulyanovsk Region by a commission of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation under the leadership of the Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Major General of Police Eduard Sobol has been going on for several days and will probably end on Friday. The commission is quite large - according to unofficial information, it consists of about 17 people representing different areas of control over police activities. The commission held a meeting on Wednesday. She'll probably be finished by the end of the week.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs confirms the fact of the commission’s work, but refuses to talk about the details of the inspection and its main directions, noting that this is “an ordinary inspection, of which there are many.”

The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs did not respond to an official request from Kommersant on the day of the request, explaining that “this is important information that requires a prepared response from the relevant units.”

Ulyanovsk human rights activists believe that this is a reaction to their repeated appeals to the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Police General Vladimir Kolokoltsev. “For the last three years, we have been seeking a deep comprehensive audit of our Ministry of Internal Affairs,” Khamza Yambaev, head of the regional branch of the movement “For Human Rights,” told Kommersant. According to him, the regional department sent two appeals to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation this year alone with a request to conduct an inspection (the last one in November of this year) and three more appeals - in April, August and September - with complaints about unlawful actions of the police on specific facts . He also notes that representatives of the regional department “held single pickets directly in Moscow in front of the Ministry of Internal Affairs building demanding the resignation of Yuri Varchenko (major general, head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs since 2013) from the post of head of the regional police.” “We informed the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs that the number of crimes against individuals is growing in the region, and for some reason the police there are powerless, while they spend a lot of time and effort fighting various activists, holding actions, sometimes against those who protest against development in the landslide zone, then against participants in single pickets or even memorable coordinated actions, dozens of police are diverted to escort and even detain completely harmless activists, while serious real crimes remain unsolved,” Mr. Yambaev noted.

It is possible that the appeals of the head of the interregional “Legal Fund” Igor Kornilov to the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, as well as the Chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin and the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika, in which he drew attention to the “unfavorable situation developing in the region with the spread of drugs and youth groups." “I reported that, according to my information, police officers are extorting money from parents by threatening to open a criminal case for drugs (criminal cases have already been opened), that there are a lot of refusals to initiate criminal cases on the facts of lawlessness of youth groups, often cases are simply not initiated, and those who have been instituted do not investigate; there are many falsifications in the materials of criminal cases,” Mr. Kornilov explained to Kommersant. He believes that “the check is a completely expected reaction from Moscow to the events taking place in the region, especially since, according to my information, relations within the department itself are quite contradictory.”

It is worth noting that the data from the regional Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee on criminal cases initiated against employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the regional prosecutor's office on police checks largely confirm the statements of human rights activists. So, in the coming days (obviously, after the New Year) a criminal case will be sent to court against the former deputy chief of police for the protection of public order of the regional Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Eduard Osyanin, accused of receiving a bribe of 1.2 million rubles. “for failure to bring to justice persons engaged in illegal activities in the production of alcohol-containing products.” Recently, a criminal case was sent to court against investigators of the regional Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who extorted 100 thousand rubles from the wife of a drug trafficking suspect. for mitigating the preventive measure, a verdict is expected in the coming days against the detective for particularly important cases of the regional police drug control department, who “demanded 300 thousand rubles from the detainee’s mother for allegedly not including important documents in the case materials.” In total, there are more than a dozen criminal cases against now former employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. At the end of the first half of the year, the regional prosecutor’s office reported that “as part of supervision over the observance of the constitutional rights of citizens in criminal proceedings, prosecutors in the region put on additional records 449 crimes that were not registered with law enforcement agencies,” among those previously covered up - more than 330 thefts, 10 drug crimes, 23 the fact of causing harm to human health, at the same time, “almost 13 thousand illegal decisions of investigative bodies refusing to initiate criminal cases were cancelled.”

It is still unknown how the investigation will end. Sometimes such large-scale inspections are followed by organizational conclusions. Thus, in March of this year, by his decree, Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with other high-ranking employees, dismissed the head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Samara Region, Sergei Solodovnikov, and this happened after a similar audit of the activities of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was carried out in the region (the commission recognized the activities of the department as unsatisfactory). Also, after a large-scale inspection in November-December 2016 of the police of the Nizhny Novgorod region by a commission of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, also headed by Eduard Sobol (the work of the leadership of the Nizhny Novgorod department was also recognized as unsatisfactory), the head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Nizhny Novgorod region, General Ivan Shaev, resigned (officially he was dismissed by decree of the President of the Russian Federation in March of this year). On Tuesday, the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Saratov Region, after the work of the commission of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, dismissed three police colonels who headed various units. At the same time, the work of the Ulyanovsk police has been criticized more than once at both the local and federal levels, and the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has been repeatedly checked by the Moscow leadership, but no organizational conclusions have been forthcoming until now. “Yuri Varchenko came to our region from Chukotka (he held a similar post there). The population of this region is about 50 thousand people, and this is the level of one regional police department of not the largest city. I do not rule out that he still lacks experience, but I think he has a reserve of trust in the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Even if he leaves our region, this is unlikely to end his career. They may assign him to a smaller region or even take him to work in the apparatus,” one of the veterans of the Ulyanovsk police shared with Kommersant. Kommersant will monitor developments.

Will the case of bribe takers in uniform backfire on the head of the Ulyanovsk police?

According to media reports, a criminal case has been opened against two investigators from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Ulyanovsk region on suspicion of taking a bribe. According to the security forces leading the case, police investigators received 100 thousand rubles in the form of a bribe from the wife of a local drug dealer.

The bribe was a reward for the fact that a drug dealer was given a preventive measure that did not involve imprisonment. « The funds were intended for the selection of a preventive measure not related to imprisonment for a 29-year-old resident of the regional center, suspected of attempting to sell narcotic drugs. The management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has appointed an internal audit. If the guilt of employees of internal affairs bodies is established by the court, they will be dismissed from internal affairs bodies and will be punished in accordance with the current legislation of the Russian Federation, and their leaders will be subject to strict disciplinary liability,” the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported.

The statement, of course, sounds weighty and not even without righteous anger. And it’s high time to show anger. Only to the local police department leadership. Because, as they say, there is no place to put marks on it.

"Feats" of Ulyanovsk law enforcement officers.

For quite a long time, the Ulyanovsk regional police has been led by General Yuri Varchenko. He manages it in such a way that scandals in local internal authorities have long been overgrown with sad anecdotes.

The trail of offenses committed by law enforcement officials stretches to the horizon. And there is no end in sight to this yet. These are just the latest cases. General Varchenko’s subordinate Kristina Belyakova, while drunk, caused a fatal accident: through her fault, a 28-year-old woman, the mother of a 6-year-old child, died. The most disgusting thing is that after the incident, the culprit in police uniform tried to escape from the scene of the accident, leaving the victim to die.

The head of the department of economic security and anti-corruption department was even more distinguished with a minus sign. He, also being pretty drunk, became the culprit of an accident in which 5 people died, including three children.

The culprit, wearing police uniforms, fled the scene of the accident. Do you think the officer received the punishment he deserved? You are wrong. The case, under the watchful eye of General Varchenko, was slowed down, and soon completely hushed up.

Last year, two traffic police inspectors were caught red-handed. It turned out that they regularly extorted money from drivers and were caught doing this. The story of how in one of the regional departments two police officers used electric shock and strangulation to extract confessions from detainees became resonant.

The head of the environmental chamber of the Ulyanovsk region, Alexander Bragin, blames the police for organizing his brutal beating. A local detective, junior police lieutenant, 29-year-old Evgeny Kazantsev, beat a local resident over the head with a bottle. And these are only the cases of police crimes that have become public.

One can only guess how many crimes committed by Ulyanovsk police officers remained reliably hidden by their colleagues and superiors.

Alcohol lover Colonel Osyanin.

General Varchenko's deputy for the protection of public order, Colonel Eduard Osyanin, thundered throughout the entire region, if not the country. The case began with FSB officers shutting down the underground production of alcoholic beverages. It was a whole illegal factory.

It contained 150 thousand bottles, dozens of rolls of counterfeit excise stamps, cardboard boxes, corks and labels with the markings of well-known manufacturers of alcoholic beverages, as well as 100,000 liters of alcohol.

It was established that the counterfeit alcohol business brought its owners at least 40 million rubles in monthly income. Covered by the secret services, the underground empire for the bottling of fusel surrogates, apparently, was a widely ramified system managed with the help of law enforcement administrative resources.

In the end, the path led the security officers straight to the office of Deputy General Varchenko Osyanin. Now he is listed as one of the suspects in the high-profile case of alcohol production being put into production.

Could the chief of the Ulyanovsk police not know what his deputy was doing under his nose?! Only a person wearing rose-colored glasses can believe this.

Chukotka trace of Varchenko.

Before moving to the Ulyanovsk region, Yuri Varchenko headed the police department in Chukotka. This happened during the governorship of Roman Abramovich. As they say, it was under Varchenko that the district was literally flooded with smuggled alcohol.

The region is among the top three drinking regions in the country. Tons of alcohol produced using clandestine methods were produced in Chukotka. But the police chief Varchenko did not seem to notice this.

Maybe the underground alcohol dealers were very good at persuading him? Some backbiters think so. And, as they say, Varchenko, together with Governor Abramovich, was very fond of hunting. Moreover, hunting in protected areas.

Instead of keeping an eye on the implementation of the law, Varchenko simply flagrantly violated it. Allegedly, he was even Roman Arkadyevich’s personal huntsman.

In the Ulyanovsk region, approximately the same thing is happening. Here it is worth mentioning the Ulyanovsk governor Sergei Morozov with an unkind word. It's no secret that General Varchenko is his creation.

Did everything that was happening in the region pass Morozov by? The question, as they say, is rhetorical... However, the case of a bribe with a drug dealer has already interested the top leadership of the country's Ministry of Internal Affairs.

A special commission from Moscow was allegedly even sent to the region. Did the chair under the head of the Ulyanovsk Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs catch fire?

The turnover of the shadow “empire” for the production of fake alcohol of the deputy head of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Ulyanovsk region reached more than 400 million rubles per month

The domestic law enforcement system is undergoing the second stage of re-certification: this time the examiner is President Vladimir Putin himself. Recently, the head of state took a number of consistent steps aimed at clearing the sphere of law enforcement from “werewolves” in uniform. The president introduced a bill to the State Duma to tighten the liability of security forces for unjustified persecution of business, then pointedly dismissed a number of high-ranking employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the prosecutor's office. And immediately after this, criminal cases began to be initiated against the expelled law enforcement generals under corruption articles of the Criminal Code: for example, Leningrad Region Prosecutor Stanislav Ivanov, who was fired on the “Putin list,” was accused of receiving bribes on an especially large scale. The harsh “Putin check” is associated with the increased scale of corruption and commercialization of the law enforcement sector. The media have long been full of signals about how law enforcement officers are “milking” and “haircutting” businesses across the country. But, as it turns out, in some places police chiefs went even further, moving from “protecting” businessmen to organizing and developing their own criminal business structures.

A bolt from the blue was the resonant story of the Deputy Chief of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Ulyanovsk Region, Colonel Eduard Osyanin, against whom the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case based on the revealed facts of his participation in the underground alcohol business. The case began with the discovery of an entire shadow “empire” in the region for the production and sale of counterfeit alcohol. Traces of a foul-smelling business gradually led straight to Colonel Osyanin’s office. Since too many facts pointed to his participation in the alcohol enterprise as the main shop worker, the colonel was unable to stay on the sidelines and “out of business.”

The arrested “entrepreneurs” who were engaged in bottling counterfeit whiskey, liqueur, vodka and other products hazardous to health, during interrogations pointed to Colonel Osyanin as the godfather of the underground business. The testimony was confirmed by materials from operational activities. Suffice it to say that Colonel Osyanin’s official car, openly, regularly parked right under the fence of the criminal enterprise he led.

The scope of Osyanin’s business is amazing: the number of bottles filled with flammable liquid of dubious origin in the finished product warehouse was hundreds of thousands of units! FSB officers discovered dozens of rolls of counterfeit excise stamps, deposits of cardboard boxes, corks and labels with the markings of well-known manufacturers of alcoholic beverages, and hundreds of thousands of liters of illegal alcohol at the underground production. During the operational activities, an interesting criminal artifact was seized: a seemingly simple checkered accounting notebook, where Colonel Osyanin’s assistant accountants kept scrupulous records of the sold liquor and the income received. The amount shocked even experienced investigators: the turnover of the “werewolf” business was more than 400 million rubles a month, or almost 5 billion a year! At the same time, there are no taxes or social obligations.

This means that the “group of comrades,” in uniform and without, put kilograms of money in their pockets. And this is when 70 percent of the population can barely make ends meet, the country is at war with terrorists, and sanctions and oil are holding the state budget by the throat! There is no longer any doubt that the “werewolf” in uniform and his accomplices are responsible for many human lives. After all, the shock “work shifts” at the Osyanino underground plant coincided in time with reports of mass poisonings with counterfeit alcohol in the Volga, Urals, Kuban and other regions.

A separate story concerns the supply of alcohol to the alcohol holding of the “werewolf” Osyanin. It is no secret that the cheapest raw materials for the production of alcohol surrogate are brought from the North Caucasus through Rostov-on-Don. It is with the criminal flights of alcohol trucks, including those heading for unloading at the Ulyanovsk workshops of Colonel Osyanin, that the story of the head of the traffic police for the Rostov region, Sergei Morgachev, that thundered throughout the country, is connected. The principled chief of the Don inspectors and a native of the Ulyanovsk region declared war on suppliers of “scorched” alcohol, for which he almost paid with his life.

After this, at the command of the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, purges of the police headquarters unfolded on the Don, shoulder straps and hats flew off. The checks reached the capital: it turned out that the chiefs of the Rostov police, who fed from criminal alcohol trucks, were bringing up to half a billion rubles into Moscow “vertically” every month! However, that Rostov whirlwind ricocheted to the Ulyanovsk “werewolf” Osyanin only now, when FSB operatives covered the lair of the alcohol magnate in Ilyich’s homeland.

The commission of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, sent by Minister Kolokoltsev to the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Ulyanovsk Region, has been working in the region for several months now. The inspectors dug up such a layer of violations and additions that it was time for the head of the Ulyanovsk regional department, Major General Yuri Varchenko, to prepare with his things to leave the spacious office. But the main Ulyanovsk policeman has not yet been “turned” on “Jack Daniel’s,” as the case of Colonel Osyanin’s underground alcohol holding is now called here.

Is it possible that the head of the Internal Affairs Directorate Varchenko did not know about a huge business empire that was blooming in full bloom right under his nose, headed by his deputy and bringing fabulous profits to all participants in the criminal concession for the production of counterfeit goods? Moreover, as it turns out, only the deaf and blind had no idea about the business activities of General Yuri Varchenko’s “right hand” in the regional administration.

Rumor has it that Colonel Osyanin ensured the supply of strong drinks of his underground production to all departmental corporate parties and other public events associated with drunken drinking by servicemen. And the most knowledgeable employees, if they strain their brains, can remember General Varchenko’s “unofficial” requests to his enterprising subordinate “not to poison the personnel.” Behind such a request there was a clear hint that Osyanin should not confuse a completely dangerous surrogate, intended for sale on the side, with a counterfeit product that was more or less drinkable.

The fact that General Yuri Varchenko, of course, was aware of the shadow business of his deputy, and, perhaps, had his own general share in it, is also evidenced by other facts. For example, vigilant employees have long noticed that Varchenko lives in grand style, which clearly does not correspond to the salary of a police major general, even with all the ministerial bonuses and allowances. At the same time, Varchenko seems to have finally lost interest in his official duties: criminal lawlessness in the region is off the charts, the police have gone into disarray, citizens are equally afraid of both unruly bandits and untied law enforcement officers.

As they now bitterly joke in Ulyanovsk, Colonel Osyanin and his boss and patron, the head of the regional Department of Internal Affairs, General Yuri Varchenko, seem to have listened “attentively” to Putin, understanding him in their own way: why bother private business, which is already a nightmare with taxes, excise taxes, inspections and officials, when is it so easy and simple to create your own? Meanwhile, it turns out that Osyanin’s “werewolf” business has been flourishing for a long time.

The colonel's drinking companions had recently noticed changes in their friend's behavior and habits. Increasingly, rolling his eyes beyond their sockets, Osyanin hinted: they say, in Moscow, they “love and wait for me” because I am “in the know.” However, the question of who else is involved with the Ulyanovsk “werewolves” will be decided by a departmental inspection. But whatever its results, it is clear that it was not in vain that there was a murmur among the huckster cops from the distant regions of the Ulyanovsk province of Veshkayma and Barysh about the allegedly abandoned cry “collect quitrent for the Muscovites, otherwise “khan to all.” However, it is no longer possible to convince Minister Kolokoltsev that Varchenko did not notice his deputy’s business. Possible attempts to pay off inspectors, journalists and social activists will also turn into futile efforts. But the Ulyanovsk “werewolves” will have to “pay” the state with their shoulder straps and positions.

Meanwhile, residents of the province unanimously say that under the former head of the regional police department, Anatoly Bakaev, such disgrace was not observed: the streets were safe, cars were not burned in parking lots, businessmen were not killed, and, of course, there were no “undermined” underground enterprises. And in general, the Ulyanovsk region is a region of police traditions: the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR, Andrei Dunaev, is from here, and the current governor, Sergei Morozov, previously headed the Internal Affairs Directorate of Dimitrovgrad.

The fact that the “red” Ulyanovsk region under General Varchenko turned into a territory of lawlessness and “werewolves” does not go unnoticed either in the province or in Moscow. Residents of the region have repeatedly held rallies demanding that order be restored to the police, and the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation has more than once pointed out to the current leadership of the regional headquarters about serious and systemic problems with personnel. However, the warning did not reach General Varchenko. To correct such a blatant situation, as President Putin has shown through his recent orders, they hit not the tails and ridges, but the heads. At the same time, regardless of positions, or titles, or the gray hair under the cap, or the demon under the rib.

Gennady Khoroshev