Moscow’s Kuntsevsky District Court had ordered Chechen native Tarkhan Eldukaev to pay ₽600,000 ($7,500) in compensation for moral damages sustained by singer Avram Russo over his 2004 kidnapping.
The court released its decision on Wednesday, the Russian Interfax news agency reported.
The court partially upheld Russo’s claim, recognising that the actions of Eldukaev and other participants in the kidnapping caused the performer moral harm. Although criminal prosecution for the kidnapping episode was dropped due to the statute of limitations, the court acknowledged Russo’s right to seek compensation, as the termination of the case was not rehabilitative.
According to case materials, on 31 January 2004, the director of Moscow’s Cherkizovsky market, Telman Ismailov, invited Russo to a dinner at the restaurant Praga on the pedestrian Arbat Street. There, Russo was beaten and pressured to cancel all concerts and cooperate with Ismailov on his terms. Later the singer was taken to the village Aprelevka in the Moscow region where he was released after agreeing to meet the kidnappers’ demands.
‘Ismailov believed that Russo was a thing, his domestic animal, which must sing on command and perform wherever he wants, at any time’, Russo’s lawyer Aleshkin said during the court case.
After Russo refused to cooperate any further in the summer of 2006 and switched to another producer — Iosif Prigozhin — an attempt was made on his life, and his car was shot at. According to investigators, Eldukaev was involved in selecting the perpetrators of this attack.
A correspondent for the Russian media outlet Moskovsky Komsomolets reported from the courtroom that the court established that Eldukaev had kicked Russo in the groin after the kidnapping, threatened him with a knife, and insulted him.
Ismailov was declared internationally wanted in November 2017. Russo later left Russia; he remains abroad to this day.
In August 2025, Eldukaev was found guilty of organising an attempted murder of the Gurshumov brothers, two businesspersons. He was sentenced to 14.5 years in a general-regime colony.
Russo’s lawyer described the court’s decision as ‘positive’, and stated that the amount of compensation corresponds to common practice in Moscow courts in moral damage cases.
Russo is a singer and musician who was most popular during the early 2000s. He was born in Lebanon to an Armenian family, performed in the pop genre, released several albums, and took part in major television projects.
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