Motor recalled the story of the assassination attempt on the night governor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Kumarin

On the morning of June 1, 1994, on Turku Street, a killer shot the black Mercedes-Benz of the most authoritative businessman in St. Petersburg, Vladimir Kumarin. Almost the entire horn from the Kalashnikov went into the body of the “six hundredth”. The bodyguard died on the spot. The Tambov leader survived with eighteen wounds. Motor magazine, as part of the “Criminal Motors” section, recalled those events and the legendary lads’ car, which is still in demand on ad sites.

In the nineties, the “six hundredth” – the Mercedes-Benz S-class in the back of the W140 – was not just a car. He was a ticket to the big leagues, a status symbol that was not discussed. If my brother drove a black Boomer, it means he was a mediocre soldier, someone who resolved issues on the street. If he emerged from a tinted “Boar”—as the W140 was popularly called for its bloated shape—it meant that in front of you was a man who had already come out of the trenches and was ruling an entire empire.

Mercedes-Benz W140
Thomas Doerfer

According to the legends of those years, there were more “six hundredths” in Moscow than in all of Germany, and although this is an exaggeration, there was still some truth in it. It was precisely this Mercedes that was driven by the notorious head of the Orekhovskys, Sylvester (Sergei Timofeev), who was eventually blown up in his own car. It was the W140 that in the hard years was called a “suitcase on wheels” and was feared on the roads, because they knew that difficult people were sitting inside.

Vladimir Kumarin, the leader of the Tambov group, who would later be called the “night governor” of St. Petersburg, also chose this car. And she almost became his last, but in the end she played a saving role.

The exploded Mercedes-Benz S600 of Sergei Timofeev
Frame: the film “Soviet mafias. Demon of Perestroika” Firefighters extinguish the exploded Mercedes-Benz S600 of Sergei Timofeev
Frame: the film “Soviet mafias. Demon of Perestroika” The exploded Mercedes-Benz S600 of Sergei Timofeev
Frame: the film “Soviet mafias. Demon of Perestroika”

In St. Petersburg, in one of the cemeteries there is a modest black obelisk. Beneath him lies Viktor Golman, an employee of the Cobra security company. His grave is unremarkable for the average person, unless you know that it was this man who died on the day when Vladimir Kumarin almost lost his life.

Vladimir Kumarin is a native of the Tambov region, he came to Leningrad after the army, entered the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Optics, but abandoned his studies to work as a security guard at the Tallinn restaurant. In the mid-eighties, he went to prison for the first time – for hooliganism and possession of ammunition. The zone did not break him, but, on the contrary, hardened him even more. Returning to freedom, he assembled a team of fellow athletes, and by the early nineties, the Tambovites already controlled half of St. Petersburg.

Seaport of St. Petersburg
JSC “Sea Port of St. Petersburg”

Kumarin took over the seaport, opened legal companies, and acquired connections in the mayor’s office and law enforcement agencies. People came to him for solutions to any problems – from restaurateurs to deputies. He was called the “night governor” because he received visitors at night, solving issues that the daytime government could not solve. The media discussed a lot related to crime, but to the credit of the authority, they also talked about him as a philanthropist and philanthropist.

And success always has enemies. Three days before June 1, an unknown person called Kumarin and said that an assassination attempt was being prepared on him. The informant looked dull; he demanded twenty thousand dollars for a warning. After haggling, I agreed for a thousand. The price seemed suspicious to Kumarin, and he did not attach much importance to the call.

The shot Mercedes of Vladimir Kumarin
District Department of Internal Affairs of St. Petersburg The shot Mercedes of Vladimir Kumarin
District Department of Internal Affairs of St. Petersburg

However, something inside still worked. He took a pump-action shotgun into the car. And, what turned out to be fateful, I got behind the wheel of a Mercedes myself. On the morning of June 1, Kumarin and Viktor Golman were driving along Turku street. A red VAZ-2109 stood nearby. A burst of machine gun fire came from the “nine”. 5.45 caliber bullets, standard ammunition for the Kalashnikov, pierced the body right through. Twenty-eight holes were later counted in the Mercedes. Golman, who was sitting in the passenger seat, died instantly.

Kumarin was found in the car with eighteen bullet wounds. He was hit in the head, chest, stomach, and right arm. The pressure dropped to forty to zero. It was almost impossible to survive in such a situation. He was operated on for several hours at the Kosciuszko Hospital. It was not possible to save the right arm – bullets with a specially shifted center of gravity tore the muscle tissue so that recovery became impossible.

Kumarin spent twenty-two days in a coma. Doctors recorded clinical death several times, but he survived. There was a siege around the hospital in those days: the Tambovites literally blocked all the entrances, they were afraid that they would come to finish off. Riot police stormed the building on the fourth day and detained sixty armed men. By that time, the leader had already been transported first to Dusseldorf, and then to Switzerland for further treatment.

Mercedes-Benz S-class (W140)

The car in which Kumarin was traveling belonged to citizen Churikova. It was a black Mercedes-Benz S-class coupe (W140) – the legendary “six hundredth” (even if the index was S500), which in those years was called a “tank on wheels”. Heavy, huge, but very fast.

The length of the body of this car is more than five meters. The width is almost ninety meters. The car weighs more than two tons, and if fully loaded, it weighs almost two tons and seven hundred kilograms. Under the hood it had a six-liter V12 engine with a power of three hundred and ninety-four horsepower. Acceleration to hundreds took only six seconds – for such a heavyweight in the nineties this was a phenomenal indicator.

Mercedes-Benz 600 SEL W140
nakhon100, licensed under CC BY 2.0

The main thing in this car is not even power. The W140 was designed with maximum passive safety in mind. Reinforced A-pillar, massive door beam, thick metal. It was this German engineering thought that played a key role: Kumarin was sitting behind the wheel, and part of the machine gun burst fell on the power frame of the body.

If he had been on the right, in the passenger seat, the bullets would have passed through without interference. And so several deadly pieces of lead changed their trajectory, passing through the metal, and did not reach the vital organs. The professional driver who was supposed to be behind the wheel would have died immediately. Kumarin, who was driving, survived not only due to chance, but because of the incredible will to live that many noted about him.

Epilogue

After the assassination attempt, Kumarin went abroad and returned only in 1996. He took his mother’s maiden name, Barsukov, to distance himself from his criminal past. He went into legal business, became vice-president of the St. Petersburg Fuel Company, controlled oil terminals and the restaurant business. He even graduated from the very institute from which he was once expelled and received an engineer’s diploma with a specialty in Laser Engineering and Laser Technologies.

“Kumarin was 38 years old at the time. He was attacked by the Velikolukskys. There is no need to dive into the reasons – it’s all described one way or another. Another thing is important – the leader will survive, and all the conspirators will soon be sent to heaven. After this, Kumarin’s reputation became beyond discussion,” the 47News portal wrote about this story.

However, it was not possible to escape from law enforcement officers. In 2009, he was sentenced to 15 years on charges of raider takeovers. In 2016, another 23 years were added for organizing the assassination attempt on businessman Sergei Vasiliev. The final sentence is 24 years in a maximum security colony. In 2019, the court confirmed this verdict.

Who actually shot him in 1994 remains a mystery. The Velikiy Luki Gavrilenkov brothers, with whom the Tambov brothers had a long-standing conflict? Our own people who crossed the road in oil schemes? Questions with many answers and hypotheses.

The material was created on the basis of publications of the publications Fontanka.Ru, Lenta.Ru, 47news, “Version on the Neva”.