‘We’ll send you home in a body bag’ Mediazona investigation reveals rogue ‘private army’ inside Russian military that terrorized fellow soldiers
In late 2022, while serving with Russia’s military in Ukraine’s Kherson region, Senior Sergeant Dmitry Maiborodin effectively created his own personal army of 60 men. According to a new report by Mediazona, Maiborodin’s unit ignored the chain of command and terrorized Russian career officers. The group was disbanded only after Maiborodin ordered his subordinates to torture a soldier to death. Meduza summarizes Mediazona’s story.
The 41-year-old Maiborodin, who goes by the call sign “May,” was assigned to Russia’s 10th company of the Sokol battalion of the 108th Guards Air Assault Regiment in the fall of 2022. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he had fought with separatist groups in the Donbas. On paper, Maiborodin was a squad commander, overseeing just three men.
However, in practice, even during training maneuvers near Novorossiysk, Maiborodin began attracting a group of soldiers who were personally devoted to him. After their deployment to the Kherson region, he was able to establish control over two whole platoons of the 10th company, made up entirely of men loyal to him. According to Mediazona, the company commander “silently acknowledged” the sergeant’s leadership and focused instead on handling paperwork.
Despising military subordination, May saw himself more as an instructor and mentor in combat training. His fellow soldiers recognized his knowledge and skills, and no one — not his subordinates or the battalion commander — dared challenge a veteran of Chechnya and Syria with dozens of fighters under his command.
Maiborodin openly defied orders from the Sokol battalion commander, refusing to dig trenches, build fortifications, or engage in defensive preparations. Within less than two months, Mediazona writes, he had formed a unit that answered to no one but him. It became known as the May Syndicate and swelled to nearly 60 fighters. Members distinguished themselves with special patches featuring a bearded skull in a helmet and an inscription of the group’s name.
“To maintain discipline, May introduced a system of fines and penalties. The May Syndicate even had its own ‘unofficial treasurer’ with the call sign ‘Yunnat,’ who collected ‘donations’ for collective needs, such as paying for satellite Internet. According to soldiers, Maiborodin never kept anything for himself,” reported Mediazona.
In December 2022, Corporal Viktor Utyayev (call sign “Hooligan”) vanished from the Sokol unit’s encampment. Evidence later showed that he had gotten severely drunk shortly before his disappearance, prompting orders from Maiborodin to “teach him a lesson.” The May Syndicate’s enforcers tied Utyayev to a tree and left him there overnight without a jacket in near-freezing temperatures. The next day, he died of hypothermia, and his body was buried in the forest.
Military investigators initially suspected that Utyayev had deserted, as no soldiers from the 10th company spoke up during interrogations, fearing reprisals from Maiborodin. According to Mediazona, when Sokol battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Azat Rakhmatullin tried to get to the bottom of what had happened, Maiborodin warned him: “If you report this to the regiment commander, we’ll send you home in a body bag.” Rakhmatullin later admitted that he realized Maiborodin wasn’t bluffing and, fearing for his life, locked himself inside a Tiger armored vehicle, refusing to leave until morning.
Maiborodin and his men threatened everyone against talking about what had happened to “Hooligan.” During a conversation with Rakhmatullin, May suggested blowing up Utyayev’s body and listing him as a combat loss so that his relatives could collect state payouts. “This is war, and anyone can end up in a body bag,” Rahmatullin quoted the sergeant.
By late January 2023, Mediazona reports, “it became clear that the situation in the 10th company was out of control,” prompting the decision to withdraw the unit from Ukraine’s frontlines. But Maiborodin didn’t like the location chosen for his men’s redeployment and instead led them out of the Kherson region to Crimea. In the city of Armyansk, Maiborodin’s men effectively reported only to him. When they ransacked a cafe (even opening fire), they were detained only briefly by military police. Maiborodin soon returned his unit to the front as if nothing had happened.
It was only by February 2023 that military investigators succeeded in getting soldiers from the 10th company to testify against Maiborodin. A month later, he was arrested and detained at a Sevastopol guardhouse. The Defense Ministry charged him under felony statutes covering deliberate bodily harm, misuse of authority resulting in death, and unlawful imprisonment by a group. The investigation concluded in early 2024, but Maiborodin still hasn’t been sentenced.
Cover photo: Alexey Maishev / RIA Novosti / satellite / Imago Images / Scanpix / LETA