Karachay–Cherkessia man convicted of murdering Moscow tourist he caught urinating on the roadside
The Supreme Court of Karachay–Cherkessia has found local resident Abdullakh Bostanov, 34, guilty of murdering Moscow tourist Oleg Albegov in February 2022. The murder occurred during a roadside brawl that started after Albegov and other tourists were caught urinating on the side of the road.
According to the republic’s prosecutor’s office, the court sentenced Bostanov to 12 years in a maximum-security prison, with the subsequent restriction of freedom for one year under the criminal code article ‘murder committed out of hooligan motives’.
The murder occurred on 16 February 2022 on the Mineralnye Vody–Arkhyz highway. A group of Moscow tourists in a Ford Transit minibus were travelling to a ski resort when one of the members of the group, 35-year-old Oleg Albegov, needed to stop to relieve himself. The minibus stopped at the roadside near the village of Kardonikskaya, where multiple tourists left the car.
According to investigators, when Albegov walked about 20 metres away from the road, a car driven by Bostanov passed by. Bostanov and his passenger expressed dissatisfaction with the tourists’ behaviour, and a verbal altercation began. Despite the apologies offered by the tourists, the conflict escalated into a fight. At one point, Bostanov pulled out a knife and stabbed Albegov in the stomach. The wound proved fatal: damage to an artery led to the man’s death on the way to hospital.
Albegov left behind a wife and two underage daughters. Friends described Albegov as a reliable person who was actively involved in the motorcycle community, volunteer programmes, and providing assistance to people injured on the roads.
Tourists who witnessed the murder were under police protection throughout their stay in the Caucasus.
The investigation established that after the attack, Bostanov fled the scene and went to Belarus, where he lived under forged documents. In April 2023, he was extradited to Russia under escort. Given the resonance of the incident, the case was considered by the Supreme Court of the republic rather than by a district court.
‘A guest in the Caucasus is sacred, and nothing can justify what happened. Everything possible must be done so that something like this can never happen in our country,’ Zarina Doguzova, the head of the now abolished Federal Tourism Agency, said after the incident.
At the same time, a campaign in defence of Bostanov began on social media, with some claiming that he had acted in self-defence and that he was allegedly forced to pull out a knife to protect himself from the allegedly intoxicated tourists.
The head of a local legal centre, Ruslan Khalkachev, stated in February 2022 that Bostanov had acted like a man, while Rada Baichorova, a representative of the neo-Nazi paramilitary group Rusich in Karachay-Cherkessia, claimed that Bostanov had been ‘defending the honour and dignity of women’, who should not have to witness indecent behaviour by men on the road.
