A Russian private military company founder faces charges over an alleged scam targeting recruits. Journalists list him among officers accused of executing their own men.
Alexey Marushchenko, the founder of the Russian private military company (PMC) “Yastreb,” and several of his associates are in pre-trial detention on charges of defrauding nearly 100 newly recruited contract soldiers, according to the Russian business daily Kommersant. Investigators say the victims paid the group in exchange for promises that they would serve not in regular Defense Ministry units, but in the PMC — where conditions would allegedly be easier.
Marushchenko was born in Karelia in 1976 and graduated from a military academy in Moscow as a reserve lieutenant. In the 1990s and 2000s, his name appeared in several criminal cases, including extortion, robbery, insult, and causing grievous bodily harm, the outlet Agentstvo noted. It is unclear whether he ever served time.
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Until 2014, Marushchenko lived in St. Petersburg, where he ran a network of tattoo studios. After Russia occupied Crimea and the war in Donbas began, he turned to a long-held ambition: entering the “military business,” according to the St. Petersburg publication Bumaga.
He first created a group known as PMC “Mar.” Marushchenko claimed his fighters operated in southern and eastern Ukraine and said he was collecting information on Russian military personnel, allegedly for deployment to Syria. In 2014–2015, he frequently appeared in the media and gained some notoriety, but later faded from public view. In 2018, researchers from the Conflict Intelligence Team classified PMC “Mar” as a “dummy” outfit — something closer to a private security firm or training center than a real private military company.
The group reappeared in the news in 2020 after the detention of 33 Russian mercenaries in Belarus. Early reports linked them to PMC “Mar,” though they were later described as fighters from Wagner Group. Marushchenko claimed he had shut the company down in 2018. After closing his earlier ventures — “Mar” and a lesser-known group called “Polite People” — Marushchenko founded PMC “Yastreb” in 2018.
His name resurfaced again in 2022, shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in connection with the disappearance of two businessmen from Pskov. The men had traveled to occupied territories with humanitarian aid and were reportedly detained by unknown individuals. Their relatives said Marushchenko had encouraged them to organize the trip and accompanied them. Meduza was unable to find any public confirmation that the men were ever found.
Little is known about PMC “Yastreb’s” actual role in the war in Ukraine. Military analysts Sergey Auslender and Kirill Mikhailov told the outlet Vot Tak they had not heard of the group’s activities. Still, it appears to have existed in some form. In 2025, the outlet Verstka included Marushchenko in a list of so-called “zeroers” — commanders accused of killing members of their own units. An anonymous source described a system of extortion and violence at a training ground in Luga, where recruits were allegedly forced to pay large sums for everything from military IDs to exemption from combat. Those who resisted, the source claimed, were tortured or killed.
Ukrainian General Staff officials have linked PMC “Yastreb” to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). Now, according to Kommersant, the FSB itself — alongside Russia’s Investigative Committee — is investigating Marushchenko. He was reportedly detained in the Kursk region last year.
The case includes charges of fraud, weapons theft, extortion, and murder. In one reported incident, a serviceman was allegedly chained to a tree for three days. Details of the murder charge remain unclear. Marushchenko’s lawyer declined to comment without his client’s consent, adding only that the case was receiving undue attention and was “entirely routine” and unrelated to politics, Kommersant reported.
