Attention: Sex bombs!

Hypersexual women — Who are they?

Most people consider sexual promiscuity to be a characteristic typical of males. Many men change their women like gloves, or maintain numerous lovers at the same time. They are often referred to as players, or womanizers. But what’s the name for women who have a full sex life? Who are they? How do they make a living? What are their goals?

You probably know at least one woman who changes her sexual partners on a regular basis. She doesn’t want to get married and holds the joy of sex in higher esteem than the dream of having a family. Many such women are successful and live comfortably.

Should ladies forget their age-old dream of one prince for all eternity? There are so many fish in the sea… Is polygamy only a male trait?

Where it all starts…

Let’s begin with how these female sexual giants are born.

“Fear is often the root cause of such behavior,” said Tatyana Danilova, a psychologist and communicative skills trainer. “Normal women who want a monogamous lifestyle may find themselves traveling this heavy road. And their fears are to blame.”

The most typical fears:

1. Fear of age

The woman is over 30 and decides she needs to make up for lost time. She usually has a successful career and has achieved everything she’s dreamed of. So she decides to cut loose while she’s still pleased with her reflection in the mirror.

2. Fear of loneliness

The woman may be young, but wants to find a partner. Her main testing tool is her bed.

3. Fear of belonging to one man

The woman got burned in a previous relationship. She may have given herself to one man who she loved but received little in return. So she tries to make up for the lost time. She goes with many other men who usually take more than they give.

4. Fear of strong feelings

The woman has an active sexual life. She judges men by their ability in bed. She throws off feelings of attachment in the blink of an eye. She also fears serious relationships. By changing sexual partners, she thinks she’s protecting herself.

Men also become examples for their women. Difficult divorces or betrayals can force women to try their partners’ polygamous ways. Why can he sleep around and I can’t, they ask? So the women go about proving they can.

Picking the plumpies

Is it really possible, though, that female sexuality hinges on a series of psychological factors and fears?

KP journalist Anna Kukartseva tried to get to the bottom of the issue and came to a startling conclusion.

“Female sexuality often depends on her personal psychological preferences, but also on hormonal changes,” said gynecologist Aleksandr Zakharov. “Certain sexual flashes occur in the periods of sexual maturity (18-25) and sexual formation (33-38). In the latter period, the female organism is most satiated with estrogen — female hormones. Some women always have a surplus of estrogen. They can often be noticed by their outer appearance. They are traditionally plump, healthy and happy. Thin women often have increased male hormone, androgen.”

Test in bed

“The more artistic a person’s profession, the more sexually hungry he is. Not all sexual giants are geniuses. but many geniuses are sexual giants,” wrote Mikhail Veller in his collection of short stories, “On Love.” He says sex and art are the same.

“Yekaterina the Great,” Veller wrote, “sent her potential lovers for testing to a trial dame to see how good they were in bed. The empress led an active sexual life until her death. But this didn’t affect her ability to change the country far and wide.” He adds that strong energy manifests itself in different ways. The stronger the energy, he says, the directer its biological manifestation. So an impotent person can’t be a powerful.

She was with this one, and that one…

But according to German psychiatrist Burt Hellinger’s theory, sexual relations actually deplete a person’s energy. Men and women who have numerous romantic relationships give pieces of themselves away to whoever they sleep with. At some point, the individuals simply lose the ability to love.

Enough! Time to settle down!

Sooner or later, time also becomes a factor. It’s easy to be promiscuous when you’re young, beautiful and sexual. But then what? And having to maintain a beautiful outward appearance is only half the story. Some women just get tired of the lifestyle. Others feel immoral.

Natalya Tolstaya, Psychologist and Author:

“Promiscuous women go to see psychologists and say they have forgotten how to love. Their first major crisis occurs when they decide to stay with one man. But at the same time they wonder if they should tell him the truth about their past. But if you take a closer look at the situation, you have to ask why she started leading this wayward lifestyle to begin with? The answer is she was bored. She always wanted a festival around her. But family life isn’t always a holiday. With time, these women become matrons or perfect embodiments of morality. Some thank their husbands the rest of their lives for clearing their reputation. Others lead self-denigrating lifestyles and become religious. However, these women are said to become wonderful parents and wives. They have a great deal of experience and value what they have.” READ MORE

Roman Abramovich is no longer Chukotka’s governor

Roman Abramovich’s dream of slipping off the gubernatorial shackles has finally come true.

The Kremlin reported today President Dmitriy Medvedev has granted Abramovich’s request to resign from his post as governor of Chukotka. Medvedev reached the decision after receiving a written request from Abramovich. Deputy Governor of Chukotka Roman Kopin was appointed acting head of the region. Abramovich’s Press Secretary John Mann confirmed the information to KP.

Abramovich’s resignation was hardly a sensation in political circles. It was commonly known that Abramovich appealed to former President Vladimir Putin on numerous occasions with a similar request. In late 2006, news about the his intention first shook the Chukotka population, which considers Abramovich almost a “white shaman.”

The billionaire oligarch Abramovich has resided in Moscow and London in recent years. He was estimated by Forbes magazine as the 15th richest person in the world with a net worth $23.5 billion. He is best known as the owner of the private investment firm Millhouse Capital and Chelsea Football Club in London.

Abramovich’s romance with Chukotka began in 1999. The oligarch was elected as the region’s state deputy. A year late, he became the governor and registered his Sibneft subsidiaries in the region. Today, they account for 80 percent of Chukotka’s budget.

“I think they’ll declare a regional mourning,” economist and political scientist Yulia Latynina said about his resignation. “But Abramovich is probably sighing in relief. He spent an enormous amount of money on Chukotka. He built everything in the region from the airport to hotels and hospitals. He was kind of praying for the forgiveness of his sins in the region. It’s just like the Russian trader who stole something and then lit a candle in church. Chukotka was Abramovich’s personal candle. And minimizing Sibneft’s taxes was just incidental.”

“Abramovich isn’t going anywhere,” said Mikhail Leontev, editor of Profile magazine. “His main work is being Abramovich. Lately he hasn’t been personally involved in managing the region anyway. The infrastructure there was built long ago. His people are in place and I think it’s unlikely anything will change. If the taxes from Abramovich’s companies keep passing through the Chukotka budget then everything will be fine in the region just as before.”

KP’s Dossier

Roman Abramovich — An oligarch’s fate

Biography
Roman Arkadevich Abramovich was born Oct. 24, 1966 in Saratov. His mother Irina Vasilevna was a musician and his father worked as a supplier at a construction trust in Syktyvkar.

Abramovich became an orphan at a young age. Both his parents died within two years — first his mother and then his father.

After his parents’ death, his grandmother (on his father side) Tatyana Semenovna took him in.

In 1970, Abramovich and his grandmother moved to Ukhta to live with his father’s brother, Leyb Nakhimovich.

In 1973, Abramovich went to first grade at Ukhta School No. 2.

In 1974, Abramovich and his grandmother moved in with his second uncle Abram Nakhimovich in Moscow. Abramovich studied at School No. 232, which stressed the performing arts. After graduating from school and botching his university studies, he moved to his relatives in Komi.

In 1984, Abramovich went to the army (artillery regiment in Kirach in the Vladimirsk region).

In December 1987, Abramovich married Olga Yurevna Lysova.

In October 1991, Abramovich married a second time to stewardess Irina Vyacheslavovna Maladina.

From 1991-1993, Abramovich was the director of the Moscow firm AVK. The firm handled commercial and intermediary activities, including reselling oil products.

In 1992, Abramovich became the central figure in a criminal case for stealing government property.

What happened: As part of their intermediary activities, AVEKS-Komi sent a train with 55 cisterns of diesel (worth 3.8 million rubles) from the Ukhtinsk Oil Production Factory. Abramovich met the train in Moscow and resent the shipment to the Kaliningrad military base using a fake agreement, but the oil products arrived in Riga.

In June 1992, Abramovich was arrested in Case No. 79067 for the large-scale theft of state property. He actively cooperated with the investigation. The Ukhtinsk Oil Production Factory was compensated for the loss by the diesel’s buyer — the Latvian-U.S. Chikora International. The case was closed.

In 1993, Abramovich founded Mekong. He began selling oil from Noyabrsk. He met Boris Berezovsky.

Together with Berezovsky, the future oligarch founded the offshore company Gibralter-registered Runicom Ltd. and 5 Western European subsidiaries. Abramovich headed the Moscow affiliate of the Swiss firm, Runicom S.A.

In August 1995, Sibneft was created by Boris Yeltsin’s presidential decree. It was rumored that Abramovich was the chief of the organization with Berezovsky promoting the business at higher circles.

In May 1998, Abramovich and Berezovsky had their first conflict. Experts say the reason for the disagreement was Berezovsky’s interest to merge with Yukos. Berezovsky thought he would gain political benefits from the move, while Abramovich insisted on putting business first. He tried to purchase Sibneft from Berezovsky.

The second serious conflict was over Abramovich’s attempt to replace Berezovsky’s figure in the Presidential Administration.

In December 1999, Abramovich won the State Duma elections in the Chukotka Single Member Constituency District No. 223 with 59.78 percent of the votes. He worked in Moscow at the Committee for North and Far East Issues.

In 2000, Abramovich graduated from the Moscow State Judicial Academy. At the year’s end, he won the Chukotka gubernatorial elections with 90 percent of the votes. In January 2001, he gave up his deputy’s mandate to head the region.

Abramovich sent clothes, food and medicine to Chukotka using his own finances ($18 million, he says). Thanks to Abramovich, 3,000 residents had the chance to vacation on the Black Sea.

Abramovich’s idyllic efforts to support the region were interrupted when the General Prosecutor’s Office called him in for an interrogation. A criminal case was launched regarding the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation’s act to privatize Sibneft.

At long last, their conclusion was read — the company had been sold for pennies. The auditors were also surprised why Abramovich had received such enormous tax privileges — twice more than the federal norm. But it turned out everything was legal. The majority of the employees were handicapped.

In late 2000, Abramovich bought the Berezovsky’s controlling share in ORT. In the summer of 2001, he sold the stake to the state-owned Sberbank. He then purchased shares in Aeroflot — part of the Russian-Belarusian company Slavneft. He became one of the world’s richest men estimated at $1.4 billion.

In the summer of 2003, Abramovich bought a bankrupt English football club, Chelsea. He covered the team’s debt his first week on the job, and quickly purchased a number of international stars.

In 2004, UK media became interested in Abramovich. BBC shot a documentary about the Russian oligarch. The publisher Harper Collins Willow released the book, “Abramovich: The Billionaire from Nowhere.”

In 2005 and 2006, Chelsea became England’s football champion for the first time in 50 years.

All these years, Abramovich was buying and selling… He was subject to constant checks and accusations, and forced to make numerous payments and compensation.

In the summer of 2005, Berezovsky announced that he was taking Abramovich to court. He said Abramovich had forced him to sell his shares in Russia at a lower price, threatening the state would seize them if he refused. In 2000-2003, Berezovsky sold 50 percent of Sibneft to Abramovich for $1.3 billion and 49 percent of ORT for $150-170 million. In 2003-2004, he sold 25 percent of Russian Aluminum to Abramovich for approximately $500 million.

In October 2007, Berezovsky tried to hand Abramovich a notice of appointment when he stumbled upon him at a London boutique. Berezovsky extended a folder towards Abramovich, but the latter held his hands behind his back. The documents fell onto the floor. According to British law, a notice of appointment must be handed over in front of witnesses.

Berezovsky says he has the following issues with Abramovich: ORT, Sibneft and Russian Aluminum. He says Abramovich stole his legal business through blackmail and other illegal proceedings. He estimates the financial loss at 5 billion pounds.

In 2005, contrary to rumor, Abramovich didn’t plan to continue his gubernatorial duties a second term. Bu the oligarch was again appointed by parliament to head Chukotka.

In December 2006, Abramovich asked the president to relieve him of his gubernatorial duties. The head of state refused.

What does Abramovich own?

In early 2006, Abramovich was the 11th richest man in the world, and Russia’s richest man worth $18.2 billion. He holds an honorable 2nd place among Britain’s richest men at 10.8 billion pounds.

Property:

Boeing 737 and Boeing 767

Two helicopters

Yachts (one of the largest, most expensive in the world) “Le Gran Bleu”, “Pelarus” (equipped with a missile system and mini-submarine) and “Project 790.”

Abramovich gave “Le Gran Bleu” away as a gift. But in March 2008, reports surfaced that the oligarch is building what will be the world’s second largest yacht at a German dock.

Abramovich purchased numerous land and homes in London and throughout the world.

In March 2006, Abramovich’s partners registered their investment firm Millhouse Capital in Russia. The firm planned to manage investments in Russian industries. In July 2006, Millhouse purchase 60 percent of the Courier publishing house that specializes the alcohol industry.

On June 13, 2007, it was reported that Millhouse Capital purchased a gold mine in Chukotka and later in the Magadansk region. READ MORE

Tunguska meteoroid turns 100 years old. Part 2

Scientists still don’t know what happened June 30, 1908 in the Siberian taiga near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River

A KP journalist visited the epicenter of the explosion of the Tunguska meteoroid near Vanavara village. Today, the territory is home to the Tunguska State Preserve. Employees and guides say they don’t believe a meteoroid actually fell. Numerous expeditions to the area over the past 100 years haven’t revealed a single fragment of the cosmic body.

Maybe it wasn’t a meteoroid?

An age-old argument continued our first night at “The Harbor.” The base had been established by the Tunguska researcher Leonid Kulik 100 years ago. I was told that the debate had been going on for years.

“One can say that finding a fragment in the taiga is the same as a needle in a haystack,” said Sergey Tarasov, a senior employee at the preserve. “But this isn’t our first year here. We’re sure there are no fragments of the meteoroid in the taiga. And in terms of all these expeditions… Well, people just want to travel into the wilderness and all the trips are paid for by the treasury. Not too long ago, Italian researchers said the meteoroid is at the bottom of Cheko Lake. They say half a million euro is needed to the drill the lake. But I can tell you without doing any drilling that there’s nothing there. Look the shore is covered with trees. Some are over 100 years old. If the meteoroid had fallen by the lake, the blast wave would have torn them right down.”

So it seemed everyone was basically split into two camps. One side believed the legendary explosion was natural phenomena unrelated to the cosmos like an explosion of a methane cloud. The other side said the taiga catastrophe was in fact the result of experiments conducted by the electrical wizard Nikola Tesla.

Electrical wizard

Interestingly, Moscow’s scientists joined the debate last week. They were unlikely participants in the heated debated of Vanavara’s hunters and fisherman.

“We did in fact accept the conjectures that Nikola Tesla may have been party to the incident on June 30, 1908,” said Andrey Alkhovatov, deputy chairman of the “100 Years of the Tunguska Phenomenon. New Approaches” Conference’s Organizational Committee and candidate of Mathematical Sciences. It’s well known that the electrical wizard Tesla, who lived in the U.S. at the time, made a number of experiments transmitting electric energy wirelessly across long distances. There are descriptions of his experiments where the thunderous discharges from his laboratory stretched over 5 meters and the accompanying thunder was heard for 25 kilometers. And so the legend was born that the taiga explosion was the result of one of his unfortunate experiments.”

It seems Tesla wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times in 1908 stating: “Even now, my wireless energetic facilities can turn any region on Earth into an area unfit for life.” Maybe Tesla demonstrated his machine to a potential buyer in late June? Many witnesses claimed to have seen pulsating, strangely silver clouds in Canada and North America that night. Their accounts are similar to those who saw Tesla’s experiments at his Colorado Springs laboratory.

“Although I have enormous doubt about this version,” said Olkhovatov, “Nikola Tesla was indeed a mysterious figure. So we accepted this version at the conference.”

The scientists also discussed the possibility that underground phenomena caused the catastrophe.

“There is a certain phenomenon known as an ‘earthquake fire,’” said Olkhovatov. “It is a strange glowing that gives way in seismically active regions. It can also take on various forms, including flying balls of fire. Taiga inhabitants saw them June 30, 1908. And the 100-year-old catastrophe occurred during a period of increased seismic activity. So the Tunguska meteoroid may have actually ‘flown’ from underground and not from the sky.”

Comet or asteroid?

Behind the scenes, participants at another conference last week, “100 Years of the Tunguska Phenomenon: Past, Present and Future,” talked about Tesla’s involvement in the 1908 event.

“There are over 100 versions about what happened,” said Sergey Yazev, senior scientist at the Sun and Earth Physics Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences and candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. “But we don’t way them all the same. For instance, I wouldn’t take seriously the version that physicist Nikola Tesla made the explosion. The bright ball of fire that was seen June 30, 1908 by thousands of witnesses didn’t fly from the U.S. to Siberia through the North Pole, as would have been the case if the magnificent inventor had been involved, but rather the other way around — from the north of Baykal to the northwest. There are essentially only two main versions in the scientific community. A cosmic body fell for sure. And it was either a comet’s icy nucleus or a stone asteroid.”Most specialists believe a comet’s nucleus crashed into the taiga. This explains why no fragments were found. If the Tunguska body was made of ice, it’s easy to explain what happened to the half million tons that fell from the sky. They simply turned into steam after the explosion. READ MORE

Tunguska meteoroid turns 100 years old. Part 1

KP journalist visits the region where the 20th Century’s most mysterious cosmic visitor exploded

Request: Clamp down your cattle

The below message was hung all over Vanavara — the nearest inhabited area to where the Tunguska meteoroid fell. The 100th anniversary of the event will be celebrated from today forward. Vanavara is a village inhabited by hunters and fishermen with a population of 3,000. All expeditions begin here and head “to the meteoroid,” as they say, the taiga area where the explosion occurred in 1908.

“Respectable Vanavara residents!”

We’d like to ask you to clean your homes and farmsteads before June 1, 2008. You must repair your fences and paint your palings. Make sure that everything has an architecturally aesthetic look. The fine is 3,000 rubles.

Further along the text reads: Make sure all your dogs are tied up. Don’t let your cattle out of the yard and don’t scatter about your cans and bottles.

But the prohibitory notice ends on a peaceful note: “Let us enjoy our internationally and scientifically significant anniversary events in a clean, beautiful and hospitable village!”

Ogda, the fire-god

Even today, no one knows what happened. On June 30, 1908 at 07:00 in the morning, residents of Central Siberia woke to a strange sound in the sky. Those who were outside saw a fireball whirl by high in the sky. Some witnesses say there were several balls that resembled “burning logs.” The object was blinding to the eyes and accompanied by a loud thunder that “shook the plates off the tables and broke the glass.”

A loud explosion ensued somewhere above the taiga. Seismic stations in Siberia, Europe and the U.S. registered a blast wave had hit the Earth twice. The following evening, the residents watched as the sky glowed strangely in the northern hemisphere. Cities like Tashkent saw “White Nights.”

The phenomenon lasted several days. Newspapers wrote about the mysterious occurrence. But recreating an accurate picture of what had transpired was complicated as no one knew where the explosion had occurred.

Valentina Bykova, Inspector of the Tunguska State Reserve:

An Evenki tribe was located several kilometers outside Vanavara on the day of the explosion. Later they recounted how they had seen something flying through the sky. There was an explosion on the horizon, and everything was soon engulfed in smoke.

The Evenki people honor the law that in the event of a forest fire they must focus all their attention on stifling the potential catastrophe. The men hurried towards the fire, but stopped short. Their path was crossed by two hills where they gathered stones to sharpen their knives. But the top of one hill was missing and a lake had formed in place of the other. The water burned and revolved in a circle.

Soon a local trader Karp Suzdalev arrived to look at the lake. Apparently, he also advised the Evenki to keep quite about the incident. He told them that news about what had happened would bring expeditions to the area and the crowds would scare the animals and burn down the taiga. The hunting grounds would also be destroyed, he said. The Evenki were already afraid the evil fire-god Ogda would come down from the sky, so visiting the area became taboo.

The lake that formed as a result of the meteoroid was later named in Suzdalevo’s honor. During the explosion, an earthquake had occurred and the seismic plates had shifted. The result was the landscape’s drastic alteration.

Research into the Tunguska phenomenon began in 1921. The naturalist Leonid Kulik had read about the incident in a magazine in 1915, but only arrived at the epicenter of the explosion 6 years later.

Kulik’s way

Kulik eventually became the most renowned researcher into the Tunguska meteoroid. He visited Vanavara several times and headed deep into the taiga to explore the area. The wooden huts, bathe houses and granaries that had been built by the courageous researchers and their fellow travellers back in the 1920s remain today.

The area of the Tunguska explosion is now known as the Tunguska State Preserve. Entrance is allowed only with the administration’s permission. The epicenter is located 66 kilometers from Vanavara.

Bykova and I headed to the area along the river with our Evenki guide. The waterway leading to the “The Harbor” — the area once inhabited by Kulik — traversed the Podkamennaya Tunguska, Chamba and Khushma rivers.

Deserted crystal mine

Kulik organized 6 expeditions to the area where the meteoroid had exploded. He planned on building an aerodrome and sending planes to Vanavara. He also wanted to build a narrow-gauge line leading to a swamp that he thought formed as a result of the meteoroid falling.

Kulik hoped to dry the swamp and extract the meteoroid’s fragments. He believed they were full of precious metals such as nickel. Kulik dreamed to build a sprawling scientific center in the area where researchers would study the Tunguska phenomenon year round. He requested financial assistance from the Soviet Scientific Committee and Academy of Sciences on numerous occasions. He also made scandalous interviews, argued with his Moscow superiors and knocked on the doors of highly ranked officials.

At one point in time, the renowned academic Vladimir Vernadskiy sponsored Kulik’s research in the area. Unfortunately, though, Kulik didn’t have the funds to proceed with large-scale work. He had too few Russian workers and the Evenki were hesitant to go to the area even for generous compensation. Many leading scientists doubted the meteoroid’s value and enjoyed the authorities’ backing.

Kulik would have bitten his lips in envy, though, if he had known how much money was to be invested in the area after World War II.

The deserted Priisk Khrustalniy (Crystal) village is located on the Chamba River halfway down the waterway from Vanavara to the epicenter. The village was built in 1957 near a rare calcite field. The mining activities were overseen by the military. They never had a shortage of workers or equipment with 300 people always on the job. Two mine shafts worked simultaneously spanning several kilometers. Other facilities were also built,including a narrow-gauge line, electric station, boiler room, club, two helicopter pads and residential homes and barracks.

However, manufacturing became unprofitable in 1983 due to floods. The workers were evacuated and the equipment was abandoned. An older resident in Vanavara said scientists from Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk had spoken with the military numerously requesting funds to build a Tunguska research base. They refused. READ MORE

“The Rifleman of the Voroshilov Regiment” hits Rostov-on-Don: Father kills daughter`s rapist and gets 17 years in prison

57-year-old Aleksandr Mansurov shoots rapist and friend

The gruesome tale began last March and brings to mind the acclaimed 1999 Russian film “The Rifleman of the Voroshilov Regiment.” A resident of the Severniy farmstead saw a Jiguli parked on the roadside near the Rostov-Salsk Highway with its doors flailing open.

“An abandoned car right on the highway? Weird!” she thought to herself. But as she approached the vehicle, she saw a young man inside caked in blood.

Investigators arrived at the scene and found another body close by. They later learned the murder victims were taxi driver Edik Khachikyan and his friend Vartan Markaryan.

Local residents had all sorts of guesses about what had happened. Several of them told the investigators that Khachikyan had raped the daughter of a local construction worker — Aleksandr Mansurov. Mansurov, they said, was tough and hot-headed.

But the police couldn’t track down the 57-year-old Mansurov right away. He and his eldest son Maksim had gone to Rostov-on-Don to find work. His wife, daughter and son had stayed behind. When Mansurov learned that the police were looking for him, he decided to surrender.

“I did it,” he said. And Mansurov proceeded to describe how the events had transpired.

“If you say too much, it won’t help you or your family…”

Alena’s preparatory courses had gone a bit late that fateful evening. She was only in the eleventh grade. It was already dark and she was too afraid to walk 5 kilometers home along the highway. So Alena decided to ask the boyfriend of her friend for help.

Khachikyan had driven Alena home on more than one occasion and she wasn’t expecting anything bad to happen. But this time, Khachikyan pulled into a forest belt off the highway, dragged Alena from the car and raped her.

“If you tell anyone about this or go to the police,” he said, “I’ll take care of you and all of your family.”

When Alena got home, she didn’t say anything to her mother about what had happened. She only found the courage to talk about the incident when her father came home a month later.

“I’ll handle this myself!”

Mansurov was always known for his bad temper. He decided that the police wouldn’t help as a month had already passed and took things into his own hands.

“When Dad got back from Rostov-on-Don,” Maksim said, “his face was just stone cold. He called me over and said he needed to go take care of some bastard.”

Mansurov called Khachikyan on his mobile, pretending to be a client. But Khachikyan recognized his voice, got scared and asked his friend Vartan to go with him. With his friend by his side, Khachikyan felt confident and began acting up in the vehicle.

“They started laughing at my sister and our family, and my father just couldn’t hold himself back,” Maksim said. “Even when I was a kid I always knew that my father would never let anyone do us any harm.”

The rapist just got away…

The court found that Mansurov had fired the first shot accidentally. The bullet hit Vartan in the head and killed him immediately.

Khachikyan then leaped out of the vehicle and Mansurov trailed after him. Mansurov chased him down and the two began fighting. Khachikyan managed to wrestle the gun away from Mansurov and shot him in the foot. But the injury couldn’t stop the offended father.

“He took them down on business,” some locals said. “Khachikyan was a druggie and raped his daughter.. Of course Mansurov shouldn’t have touched the other guy. But that’s just how the cards were dealt.”

“Mansurov acted like a real man like Mikhail Ulyanov in ‘The Rifleman of the Voroshilov Regiment,’” other locals said. “What else could he do? The rumor had circled the village several times already that Khachikyan had raped his daughter and gotten away with it?!”

But members of the Armenian Diaspora say Mansurov’s daughter is to blame. They’re confident she seduced Khachikyan. The conflict spread in the village to the point where certain individuals promised to seek revenge on the Mansurov family. After learning about the threats, Mansurov’s friends and relatives began guarding their home. Fortunately, there have been no further deaths.

Mansurov was recently handed his sentence in Rostov-on-Don. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 17 years in prison. The severity of the sentence shocked wife and children. They plan to appeal the verdict. READ MORE

Dmitriy Medvedev’s former classmate tells all

Zhanna Eylinen (formerly Popova) was born and raised in Leningrad where she went to school with Dmitriy Medvedev. Today Eylinen resides in Estonia

“Dima had integrity from childhood”

KP: Zhanna, we noticed that you and another girl were closest to Dmitriy Medvedev on this school photo. Did you two have a special or maybe even romantic relationship when you were growing up?

Zhanna: Oh no, that’s just a coincidence. The photo is actually a montage. There were more girls than boys in our class. So when they made the class album they usually put two girls next to each boy. Irina Ostratova and I wound up next to Dima Medvedev. Let me stress it’s only a coincidence.

KP: Could you tell us what school you graduated from? We’d also like to know what Dima Medvedev was like in his school years. How well did he study and what were his hobbies?

Zhanna: I only studied with Dima two years — in 9th and 10th grade at School 305 in the Fruzensk district in Leningrad. It was the only school that taught French in the district. So I can only speak about the years when we were together in one class. Dima Medvedev was a very independent young man. He was disciplined and orderly. He took his studies seriously and was a wonderful student. He was also an athlete. You could tell that he knew what he wanted from life. I mean, all of us knew Dima was going to study at the law faculty at the university. His family also had a strong influence on him. His mother was Russian language and literature teacher and his father taught at the university. As far as I know Dima wanted to be a teacher or lawyer ever since he was a kid.

KP: What kind of friend was he?

Zhanna: First I’d like to say that we just had a wonderful class. We talked a lot after our lessons, met up and went on hikes and excursions. Our class director Irina Ivanovna paid for everyone. Dima was always a kindhearted person. He always helped you out when you needed him to. Generally speaking, he was just easy to talk to…

KP: A lot of girls probably had their eye on him…

Zhanna: Yes, that’s true. A lot of girls wanted to date him. But Dima dated a girl named Sveta in another class. They had been friends since first grade. Svetlana later became his wife. We all saw them walking together and going home after school hand-in-hand.

KP: We’re getting a painfully positive picture here. You have to agree that at any school kids will be kids. In addition to studies you also have a lot of free time, personal relationships, beer outings and even fights…

Zhanna: Well, I studied with Dima during out last years at school. And we were all already fairly adult people. We never ever drank beer together. I don’t know. Maybe the boys drank when they were together, but never with us. We all knew that we needed to continue on with our studies, so no one did anything stupid out of idleness. And there were never any fights. And in terms of Dima, he was always so good-looking in his leather jacket with his folder under his arm. He was calm, cultured and reserved.

KP: What about love stories?

Zhanna: I already said that he dated Sveta. And that’s why Dima Medvedev wasn’t involved in any romantic dramas in our class. He spent his free time playing sports. Dima was also serious about music. He loved listening to rock and roll and jazz. He actually still collects original disks and is proud of his musical library.

KP: When some people leave school they hardly remember their classmates later in life. Especially those who go on to lead rich, busy lives. What is Dmitriy Medvedev like in this regard?

Zhanna: Very worthy. Dima never forgot about his school even when he held high positions. Not long ago I was at the school and saw how much everything has changed. I know that the school now has a great gym and modern computer lab thanks to his assistance. And there’s also a great stadium now right by the school. When our class met last year, Dima said it’s an immense pleasure to be with us.

Genuine friendship

KP: So your classmates still find the chance to meet like before?

Zhanna: Of course. But we don’t all meet that often. We last met in 2007 when we celebrated our 25th reunion. And before that we met for our 20th reunion. Dima Medvedev was actually the impetus for our meeting last year. His wife Svetlana organized the evening. A lot of people — 24 of 30 invitees. What’s really interesting is that almost all our class stayed to live and work in Saint Petersburg. Only one of our girls went to the U.S. and I went to Estonia. Surprisingly, nearly everyone became successful — Medvedev aside. He was spectacular and always knew what he wanted. But who would of thought that even our poorest students would have tremendous success later in life.

KP: Could you give us some examples about what your classmates accomplished?

Zhanna: One of our boys is the director of a large company in Saint Petersburg. Another owns a bread factory. Oleg Ivanov has his own photo gallery. He was always interested in photography. From a very young age he just loved photos. One of our girls has a restaurant. And everyone still helps each other out. If someone needs something, we always have people to turn to… Take Adelina, for example, who has the restaurant. She really wanted to get involved in the restaurant business, but she didn’t have the money or business connections. So our Saint Petersburg boys, some of whom have become businessmen, helped her out. Most of our classmates became successful later in life. I think I was quite successful, too.

KP: Does anyone maintain contact with Medvedev or work on his team?

Zhanna: Yes. Evgeniy Arkhipov, for instance, who was Dima’s friend at school. Today they even work together. It’s really great to see Dima hasn’t put on airs. When we met last year, I was so surprised by how relaxed he handled himself even though he was vice prime minister at the time. READ MORE

Yulia starves to death after winning beauty contest

The mother of a 20-year-old beauty queen is sure contemporary fashion killed her daughter

Vika knew something was wrong when she walked up the stairs to her apartment and heard the long intercity ring. The key was shaking in her hand. “Something’s wrong with Yulia,” she said to herself before picking up the phone. She was right. Her daughter’s roommate in Moscow was on the line.

“Are you Yulia’s mother? Please come immediately. Yulia’s been taken to the hospital,” she said.

“What’s wrong with her?” Vika asked.

“I don’t know. But she came back from a trip and she was just lying there… The ambulance took her. They told me to call you.” she said.

Vika didn’t have any money to go to Moscow. And her neighbors didn’t either. So she had no other choice but to call Yulia’s ex-husband. His secretary answered, listened and promised to pass the message to Yakov. Five minutes later she called back saying a roundtrip ticket had been purchased and was waiting for her, but “Yakov Mikhalych can’t talk at the moment as he’s at a very important meeting.”

Vika knew that Yakov wasn’t at a meeting. He just didn’t want to speak with her. He was too embarrassed to talk to “that mentally ill girl’s” mother. That’s what he called Yulia ever since the divorce. Of course, he would never say such a thing to Vika’s face. But it was a small town like many others in the Komi Republic — and any other region in Russia for that matter. A sneeze on one end is greeted by a “Bless you!” on the other. Vika’s coworkers had told her on more than one occasion with feigned sympathy how Yakov spoke about his ex-wife: “That anorexic idiot… You go to a restaurant with her, she swallows a salad shamefully and then she’s off to the toilet. Her hands smell like throw up and her mouth like dead mice.” But there had been a time when Yakov was proud to be marrying the most beautiful girl in town.

Gazelle among village cows

Yulia was always the most beautiful girl in town. The boys fought over who would dance with her in daycare or give her bike rides in first grade. In third grade each morning someone wrote on the chalk board: “I love you, Yulia.” In fourth grade she brought her first crown home from summer camp — “Miss Camomile.” In fifth grade her backpack was already full of angry anonymous messages from other girls who envied her. And in sixth grade Yulia entered the local modelling agency.

Vika’s mother laughed at her daughter’s friends at the time. They all wanted to be models. Yulia’s pimpled neighbor and even her plump schoolmate Valya. But Yulia looked like a gazelle among village cows in their company.

“I was so proud then,” Vika’s mom said. “I forgave her the occasional poor grades. I was so happy seeing her in the fashion shows at the local Cultural Center. The entire audience burst into applause when Yulia came on stage. I hung all her awards from the summer camps on our walls. I thought that I had raised a future star.”

Yulia first entered the adult competition at 15, but the judges, who come to the region only once a year, refused to accept her candidacy due to her age. At 16 she was disqualified because of her height. Yulia ran home in tears, crying: “The assistent said that I’m fat for 170 centimeters!” Vika’s initial response was to go complain to the casting director. But her reasoning got the best of her.

“You’re not fat at all!” she said calming her daughter. “That old witch was just jealous.”

“No, I’m fat. I have cellulite and I’m shaking like jello!” Yulia said, pinching her stomach and bottom hatefully.

“I should have started worrying when Yulia went on that diet,” Vika said. “But aren’t all girls on diets these days? I didn’t worry until I saw her hip bones protruding through her jeans and her ribs showing through her shirt. I started to force her to eat, but she just threw everything away. I even threatened to keep her inside until she ate. But she’d eat and then throw it all up in the toilet. Once I caught her on her knees making those horrible sounds and she told me: ‘Mom, you’re like a little kid. All the girls do it!’ And once again the judges came to that cursed beauty contest… And the worst of it is that they accepted her!”

Death by fritters

Yulia was crowned the town beauty and the most enviable bachelor in the area made her a proposal at the same time.

The next stage was the regional competition. But the girls still had several months left. Yulia decided to enroll at the law faculty at a local institute and married the son of the general director of a large local enterprise. She stopped losing weight and finally began to blossom.

But she lost the regional competition, although barely. Yulia received the special “Miss Charming” award. However, that night, Yulia got drunk, fought with her husband and went to her mother’s where she raised a scandal.

“You wanted my death with those fritters!” she screamed so loudly the neighbors started tapping their heaters loudly. “‘Yulia, eat, Yulia, eat. I lost a contract with a leading modelling agency because of my fat ass. I won the last competition because I didn’t listen to you and lost weight. And now what?”

From that day in 2005 onwards, Yulia simply stopped eating. She drank coffee and energetic drinks, smoked constantly, ate medicine that quelled her hunger and threw up in the toilet.

“She became irritable and was always cold,” Vika said. “Her blood pressure wasn’t over 90. She’d come to see me so thin… Her hands would be ice cold and she’d be crying. But she wouldn’t know why. ‘Depression,’ she’d say. And then she’d go to sleep. Yakov would call me and ask: ‘Is Yulia with you? Why isn’t she at home?’ What could I tell him?”

Finally, her son-in-law came to see her. Vika noticed something was wrong immediately. He wasn’t himself. Yakov was always such a cheerful man, but now he was gloomy and gray.

“Vika, please talk with Yulia,” he said. “I can’t take this anymore. I want a normal family — a wife and children. She’s nervous all the time and doesn’t want anything. She secretly bought a pregnancy test and I found the package in the garbage. I’m waiting for her to tell me about the baby, but she’s keeping quiet. I ask her and she says, ‘No,’ and she’s pale from head to toe. I think she has had an abortion.”

Vika spoke with Yulia that day and learned that she wasn’t pregnant. Yulia had just stopped menstruating four months earlier. Vika didn’t have time to get a grasp of the situation before Yulia argued with her husband and left for Moscow without even saying goodbye.

Yakov thought that she had a lover in Moscow and filed for divorce. Vika didn’t know what to think. Yulia only told her that she had found work in Moscow as a model and didn’t want to hear anything about returning home.

Modern beauty: Skin and bones?

Yulia called home and said that she participated in fashion shows periodically, but couldn’t lose the extra weight. Her boss at the agency was always calling her a fat-ass cow and Yulia was always on a diet. She told her mother about her friend Katya who was thinner than she was and two centimeters taller. But finally the long-awaited moment arrived when the prodigal daughter was to return home to take her exams.

“She took her clothes off and she was like a skeleton wrapped in skin,” Vika said. “I cried when she handed me her portfolio and said: ‘Mom, you don’t know anything about modern-day beauty.’” Then her friends came over, neighboring twins, and they flipped through the portfolio jealously. They listened to Yulia’s stories and I just started to doubt my own saneness.

Three years passed.

Yulia came home again, passed her exams and then left for Moscow. Word about her success in the modelling industry spread quickly throughout town. Soon Vika learned the twins were also on a diet. They wanted to be like Yulia. They just didn’t know much about the hidden life of the local supermodel. Only Vika knew and she kept silent.

I met Vika in winter 2007 when she came to Moscow to see her daughter. Yulia had suffered from anemia and oesophagus burns due to a vinegar diet. She was being treated at the Sklifosovskiy Institute. The doctor who registered Yulia called Vika and said that she had been brought in unconscious straight off the street.

“Come quickly or your daughter will kill herself,” the doctor said. “I’m telling you this as a mother and a psychiatrist.” She added that Yulia weighed 35 kilograms at 171 centimeters. Vika repeated the numbers to herself painfully, boarded a train and left for Moscow. He cried the entire trip.

Vika stayed with her friends in Moscow. She transferred her daughter to a psychiatric hospital with the diagnosis “anorexia” and appealed to me as a journalist to help her find finances so that Yulia could received treatment at a commercial clinic.

“They don’t cure anyone here, understand?!” Vika told me crying. “She hasn’t had her menstruation three years! They’re just giving her an IV, making her eat mashed potatoes and prohibiting her from closing the door to the toilet so she can’t throw up. But I know it won’t help. We’ve gone through this before. I paid them so they wouldn’t let her go until she started to gain weight. I brought her protein cocktails. She gained three kilograms and then they let her go. But she refused to come back home because Moscow is where the ‘work and fashion shows are.’ She stayed, promising me that she would eat and everything would be okay. But she then she started starving herself again.”

Yulia greeted us coldly at the hospital. She had bad skin and bruises under her intelligent brown eyes. The patient’s robe hung on her like a hanger.

“Mom, calm down,” she said. “Everything’s fine. I don’t need to go to any clinic. I’m just tired. They’ll let me go soon. I have a normal model’s appearance. Isn’t that right,” she asked, looking at me. “You write about Hollywood stars in the paper. They’re far thinner than I am.”

Gay boss doesn’t like women

At the time, I refused to print Vika’s request for funds in the section of the paper where we gather money for children sick with diseases.

“It’s one thing when people are dying, but Yulia’s just an idiot,” I said.

And in early summer, Yulia passed away. Vika called me several days ago out of the blue. READ MORE

Americans are allergic to Russia’s Topol missiles

Military technology starred in the Victory Day parade on Red Square for the first time in ages. The Russian Army’s mightiest weaponry was also on display — nuclear arms.

Various statements have been made by politicians, generals and military experts describing the state of nuclear arms in Russia. Some specialists say that Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal is being renewed and growing stronger. Others say that that’s just cheap PR. As a result, the average Russian doesn’t know much about how the situation actually stands.

KP decided to shed some light on the issue and spoke with candidate of Military Sciences Colonel Mikhail Polezhaev. Polezhaev worked for many years at elite design bureaus and scientific research institutes. He also served in the top secret Central Directorate of the Joint Staff. On numerous occasions, Polezhaev prepared reports for Russia’s leaders and the Defense Ministry. KP military columnist Viktor Baranets spoke with Polezhaev.

One hit and Russia is gone?

KP: An article appeared recently in a U.S. publication stating that the U.S. could wipe Russia off the face of the Earth with one strike. The authors also said that Russia’s nuclear arms wouldn’t have time to respond.

Polezhaev: I actually read that article by Lieber and Press. Both are university teachers. Here it is: “The U.S. Nuclear Primacy.” I even underlined a bit: “Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the U.S. stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the U.S. to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike.” What can I say? It’s a nice article. The U.S. is just confident that its nuclear arms are superior.

KP: And so this confidence has tempted the U.S. to “choke” Russia morally via its increasing missile power?

Polezhaev: Of course. They’re also trying to depreciate our missile potential with their anti-missile shield. Have any doubts? Former U.S. Defense Minister Casper Weinburg said: “If we establish an effective anti-missile shield, we’ll render Soviet arms useless and return to a situation similar to post-1945 when we were the only country with nuclear arms.”

KP: Could this American dream really see fruition in our lifetime?

Polezhaev: Yes. If Russia’s missile arsenal continues to decrease until only 200 missiles can be launched in a counter attack.

Polezhaev: That’s the number of missile the U.S. continental anti-missile shield can repulse at one time. The full-scale four-country anti-missile shield (Alaska, California, England, Czech Republic, Poland) that composes not only missiles, radars and ships, but also satellites and lasers, should protect the U.S. from 500 attacking warheads.

KP: But we have TMA missiles…

Polezhaev: Yes. Over 500 at the moment.

KP: How many exactly if it’s not a secret?

Polezhaev: We have 702 strategic missiles in our arsenal that can carry 3,155 nuclear warheads.

Gaping holes as big as France

KP: Is it really possible that all our armada wouldn’t be able to squash the U.S. in the event of a war?

Polezhaev: According to their current defense minister, “unacceptable damage” to the U.S. is the destruction of 20 cities with a population of over half a million. Our Voevod missiles can handle that task. But the goal of the U.S. is to prevent these missiles from taking off.

KP: How could this be possible?

Polezhaev: Strategic U.S. facilities forsee the sudden use of military power. Preference is given to applying non-nuclear force. The U.S. has 48 ship carriers with 1,484 cruise missiles and 92 bombers with 736 guided air missiles.

KP: But we have anti-aircraft defense…

Polezhaev: The country’s anti-aircraft defense has long been superfluous. It has gaping holes that a European country the size of France could fly through let alone a bomber. Not all the missile divisions of the Strategic Rocket Forces of Russia (RVSN) are covered, and many cities aren’t protected from air strikes.

KP: But regardless, what’s the guarantee that all the U.S. missiles will hit their targets?

Polezhaev: Today, the precision of U.S. cruise and guided missiles is about 1-2 meters. The diameter of the blast doors on our missile silos is 6 meters. So it’s difficult to say how many of our 255 Topol missiles will be able to launch — 100, 50, 10?

Russia and the U.S. have the might to destroy the world

KP: Is it really possible that nothing will be able to reach the U.S.?

Polezhaev: Let’s talk about the worst-case scenario — an unexpected nuclear attack by the U.S. Of course, this is theoretical. Let’s say the attack leads to the destruction of 90 percent of our silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). Our lightly sheltered Topol missiles and the long-range jets and atomic submarines at our bases may also be destroyed. So we’ll have 15-25 silo-based ICBMs, up to 20 missiles on our submarines and no more than 80 air-based cruise missiles. This may suffice to ensure that unacceptable damage is done to the aggressor. Of course, these are only calculations. But a nuclear war isn’t a computer game. The figures may come out differently.

KP: How precise do out ICBMs fall?

Polezhaev: The maximum accuracy of the Sotka is 920 meters; the Voevod — 500 meters; and the Topol-M — 200 meters.

KP: And our strategic nuclear land-attack arms? How do they differ from their Soviet analogues?

Polezhaev: In the Soviet era, the RVSN had 5 missile armies. Today only three remain. We had 1,398 ICBMs with 6,612 warheads. Today, we have 430 and 1,605, respectively. This decrease is continuing. In 2010, we will have two armies consisting of 10-12 divisions in the RVSN. That’s approximately 350 missiles and 1,200 warheads.

KP: What’s the reason for the constant decrease in our nuclear potential?

Polezhaev: It seems like a lack of desire to spend money — 1,200 warheads are enough for mutual containment. The issue at hand is observing circumstances backed by agreements. Today, Russia and the U.S. have enough force to destroy the world.

We’re destroying our missiles. They’re hiding theirs in storage

KP: What’s the current situation in terms of U.S. nuclear power?

Polezhaev: The U.S. has 500 Minutemen ICBMs, 18 atomic submarines with 432 missiles and over 240 heavy strategic bombers. Overall, they have 1,200 nuclear-arms carriers and almost 6,000 warheads. The U.S. believes that by 2015 they will have 1,700-2,200 nuclear warheads on strategic carriers. These are the figures set forth in the Treaty Between the U.S. and Russian Federation on Strategic Offensive Reductions (SORT). But the U.S. is being tricky. They aren’t destroying their warheads like we are. Instead they’re sending them to storage. They could recall them any second. It’s called “recall potential.”

KP: So why isn’t this considered an infringement of the agreement?

Polezhaev: What can I say if former U.S. Defense Minister Donald Rumsfield stated openly that the U.S. doesn’t intend to discuss any procedures for inspecting how the agreement is being executed with their Russian partners. READ MORE

Russian and Austrian sex maniacs share shocking similarities. Part 2

In our previous installment, KP learned that the Austrian and Russian maniacs who hid their sex slaves in homemade bunkers share shocking similarities. One key characteristic is that psychiatrists consider them to be completely sane. If this is the case, then how can society protect potential victims? How can maniacs be found before they build their underground prisons?

After Viktor Mokhov’s arrest, Skopin residents broke all the windows of his home. His mother, Alisa Valentinovna, boarded them up and locked herself in the darkness, just as her son had done to the girls from Ryzansk. Mokhov received 17 years in prison for his crimes.

“They give you less for murder!” Mokhov writes in his letters. Instead of compensating for the damage caused to his former sex slaves, Mokhov lovingly sends his monthly pension checks to his mother. He asks her to write to the president and sends her ready made texts: “Honorable president! I sincerely request your help in re-examining my son’s case. His sentence is illegal. The accusations are built on the victims’ testimonies without any evidence. My son was always involved in socially useful work and has a 37-year work history.”

“Nonsense!” Valentinovna said. “He doesn’t really think I’ll write that, does he?” she asked. Valentinovna can’t explain what happened to her son shortly before retirement. He had once been such a quiet, modest boy who didn’t drink or smoke. There seems to be only one explanation, as banal as it may seem. Mokhov got mixed up with the wrong crowd.

It’s a complicated story. Mokhov had a girlfriend named Inka, who was sent to prison for killing her lover. He waited for her faithfully. But when Inka was released from prison, she left Mokhov for her lesbian girlfriend Lena. It was Lena who helped Mokhov poison the two girls and lure them into his vault as a form of compensation. Lena was later sentenced to 5 years for her crimes. She’ll be released soon. Sadly, no one will meet her. Last month Inka got drunk and drowned in a cesspool. So it seems life isn’t boring in Skopin. I guess that’s why the cafe menus often start with the price of broken dishes and seats.

“Man is an animal by nature. Dissatisfaction is the foundation of his behavior,” said Dmitriy Plotkin, former special affairs investigator at the Ryazansk Regional Prosecutor’s Office, who took part in the case. “When the beard starts to gray, some people see they lived their entire lives with little to no sexual development. So Mokhov went out and dug a hole three years just to sleep with a woman! One wise quote like we found at Mokhov’s place is enough to trigger the crime: ‘If an elderly creature reproduces with a young one, then the former will grow younger.’”

Only two questions remain. How many men have a similar dream? And how many bunkers are already filled with prisoners?

They and It

Freud referred to the animal that controls a man’s decisions and forces him to hunt for prey as the “It.” Modern society takes this issue all too lightly. And this is unfortunate. Many scholars attribute the gruesome path taken by Hitler’s Third Reich to his sexual problems.

Most “wardens” of home prisons, including Fritzl, Komin, the Belgian rapist and killer Dyutru and the French Furnire, have served time for rape. What they did later — digging bunkers and forcing girls inside — is a repeat manifestation of this “It.”

Many parents lose their children because no one keeps an eye on sexual offenders after they are released from prison. Although Fritzl served time in 1967 for raping a nurse, Austrian archives only store information on sex offenders for 5 years. Thus, he faced little difficulty in becoming the father and grandfather to his daughter’s children. No one was regularly checking up on him. After Fritzl was released from prison, he had three children in his official family and 7 kids in his unofficial one.

Police have put together psychological portraits of potential rapists who are prone to keeping sex slaves. But hundreds of thousands of men fall into the category — 40 and older, technical education, sexual problems, authoritarian mother, fights in childhood, greed and exceptional professional characteristics.

Who can help weed out the perpetrators?

If rapists can’t be castrated, then we need to look for the bunkers that they’ve built. What advice should be given to those searching for these bunkers? I headed back to Ryzan to talk with Katya, who escaped four years ago. She once offered her advice to people in similar situations in KP (March 2004). I thought that she may have some insight.

Witnesses must have suspected something was going in in the cases of Mokhov, Fritzl, Komin and Priklopil. So who can the police rely on for reliable information? I asked Katya.

The neighbors? Katya says that this is unlikely.

Mokhov’s neighbors must have seen him climbing into his vault from his garage. But they kept silent.

Komin’s neighbors once asked him what he was digging. But they were satisfied with the answer: “Growing cucumbers.”

Maybe family members? That’s doubtful.

All Skopin residents are sure that Mokhov’s mother knew what was going on. And Valentinovna herself doesn’t hide this fact.

“Who’s in there?” Valentinovna once asked her son. “Just a refugee,” he answered and she calmed down.

Theoretically, Rosemary should have suspected her husband was up to something. She would have found the basement lair if she had checked the water or electric meter just once in 24 years. But her husband insisted that he would look after the electricity and heating as is customary in many small towns. So she never asked any questions.

How about local shop owners? Probably not.

Fritzl drove hundreds of kilometers to large supermarkets to avoid suspicion when purchasing children’s underwear and women’s hygienic goods.

How about the police then? That’s also not a fail-safe option.

Kampush’s lawyer said that the police conducted the most wide-scale searches in Austria’s history.

Russian police also searched for Lena and Katya in the Rzyansk region, but for some reason skipped over Skopin entirely.

The police did not react at all to Elizabeth’s disappearance in 1984. Instead they took Fritzl’s word that she had run off and joined a sect.

Tatyana Melnikova was held captive by a maniac in Vyatskie Polyany. She died in poverty before receiving any assistance from the state.

“We would have found these criminals more quickly back in the Soviet days,” said a retired Ryzansk police officer who I bumped into in Rzyansk. In the Soviet days, he said, someone would have told the police that Mokhov kept a prostitute in his cellar for one week and let her go long before he captured Katya and Lena.

Desensitized from the horror

The Russian and Austrian stories are similar. But they have different endings. Austrian citizens donated so much money to the Natasha Kampush Fund that she began sharing the money with other victims. She could even buy an apartment with all the money she received for interviews. The situation is more complicated for Fritzl’s family, but Austria certainly won’t leave them impoverished either. At the moment they are receiving state-sponsored medical treatment.

What about Russia?

In spring 2004, KP published Lena’s and Katya’s bank details and wrote: “Readers! We need your help! These girls have returned home to see the light of day, but not life itself. They need time and money to heal. Please help them forget the awful nightmare they were forced to live through.”

Four years later, I called them to find out if they had received much money as a result of the ad. Only 1,000 rubles a piece.

“So many horrible things are happening in Russia that people have become desensitized,” Lena said laughingly.

But money isn’t the only important thing. Everything turned out just fine for Katya and Lena. They both rehabilitated and got married. Of course, instead of receiving help from the state, they ended up having to prolong their torment by undergoing medical examinations and driving up to 150 kilometers a day to attend 18 court proceedings shortly after their escape.

Eventually Lena received a diploma as a guide and translator without attending any courses. She studied English while imprisoned to keep from going mad. Katya became a wonderful artist during her 3.5 years of captivity. Unfortunately, she wasn’t allowed to enroll at the professional art school as they required her to attend paid courses. So Katya stopped drawing and writing poetry.

After publishing one of her poems four years ago, KP was sure publishing houses would be knocking at her door. Strange. How could they have passed up such a story? A young girl who wrote 321 poems as a sex slave in captivity?!

Today, Katya is trying to write again. But this time she’s writing prose. READ MORE

Russian and Austrian sex maniacs share shocking similarities. Part 1

Such coincidences usually only happen in the movies. All these Russian and Austrian sex maniacs were electricians who built nearly identical bunkers for their victims. What’s the root cause behind the growing trend in sex slavery?

One cannot help but wonder how the drama went unnoticed for so long.

Just imagine the small town of Amstetten, Austria. On a quiet road rests a light blue home with ornate paintings decorating the rooms inside. Here lived Joseph Fritzl, 73 years old, his wife Rosemary and their many children.

But beneath the property’s loving facade lies a concrete labyrinth that once housed Fritzl’s numerous victims.

Newspapers worldwide recently reported how Fritzl held his daughter Elizabeth captive in his basement for 24 years. Each year she bore him more children. Fritzl brought the three loudest infants upstairs. He told his wife that their daughter had joined a religious sect and left the newborns on their doorstep in the night. In the evenings, Fritzl went downstairs via a secret passage in the garage to see the other children. One died in infancy and Fritzl burned the child’s body in the same gas furnace where Rosemary baked biscuits on holidays.

Given the recent trend in such crimes, the main shock factor of Fritzl’s story is how long Elizabeth was held captive. Austria witnessed a similar crime only several years ago. Natasha Kampush, who was then 18, ran away from her captor Wolfgang Priklopil after 8 years of confinement. Russia wasn’t shocked at the crime itself either. In 2004, Lena and Katya, two girls from Rzyansk, were freed from a vault beneath a garage owned by Viktor Mokhov, a factory worker in Skopin. Back then, their story was beyond comprehension. But today, they seem lucky. Three and a half years of abuse is insignificant compared to Elizabeth’s quarter-century of captivity.

Despite several differences, the horrible tales of captivity are nearly identical. The Austrian bunker was in fact much more comfortable than its Russian analogue at 55 square meters with two rooms, a kitchen, a tiled shower and a washing machine. (The Russian bunker was primitive — a 5-square-meter hovel with an electric oven and bucket instead of a toilet.) But Amstetten and Skopin both have a population of 25,000 and seem peaceful rural towns to outsiders. What else ties together the fate of Mokhov, an unmarried Russian who lived with his mother and had no personal life, and Fritzl, an Austrian family man and father to numerous children living near the Alps?

“He did what many people think about doing…”

It would be wrong to say that Skopin and Amstetten are backwards in some way. News reports about similar incidents in France, Belgium, Hungary and Italy have hit kiosks in recent weeks. What unites these criminals who imprison and sexually abuse their victims?

Psychologists say that they crave absolute power. This forces them to build a world that they alone can rule. With one press of a button, Mokhov was able to cut off the ventilation in the small bunker if his victims refused to fulfill his sexual fantasies. Meanwhile, psychologists called Fritzl an egoist after stating that he liked to feel like God. But such an illness falls outside the realm of psychiatric pathologies. Fritzl is more a victim of psychological licentiousness than anything else.

“Fritzl did what many people think about doing,” Director of the Sigmund Freud Fund Inga Shultz-Strasser told KP.

But thinking is not doing. Fortunately, few people manifest their sexual fetishes by oppressing others.

Mokhov learned how to build bunkers while watching a documentary film about the criminal Aleksandr Komin. Ten years ago, Komin built a vault where he forcibly kept two slaves. He tattooed the word “SLAVE” on their foreheads and made them stitch robes for his makeshift enterprise. After Mokhov was captured, he confessed that he plagiarized Komin. When Mokhov saw him describing how he built the cell on television, he said to himself: “I can do better than that!”

Nightmare on Fritzl’s Street

“We just live far too well. And we’re all going mad from the fat,” said the salesgirl at the flower shop near Fritzl’s home when I asked her if Amstetten was to blame for what happened.

No journalist would have ever stepped foot in the tranquil Amstetten if it wasn’t for Fritzl. The town is boring and clean, and the people are beaming and bursting at the seams like overfed tomatoes. Many are willing to give their two cents about the incidents.

“I won’t tell you if Fritzl was my client,” said a hairdresser in the neighboring building. “Because that would be unethical. And also because my uncle raped me when I was 13 years old.”

“When I rented an apartment from Fritzl, I often heard strange sounds coming from the cellar,” Elizabeth’s schoolmate Alfred Dubanovskiy told journalists.

But it isn’t easy to get an inside look into how the investigation is unfolding. The police monitor Fritzl’s home 24/7. When people get too close to the property, the police run over and say that they can’t proceed any further and have been told not to comment on the incident. Trying to interrogate the neighbors to get details is also pointless. Austrians don’t like poking their noses in others’ affairs.

Interestingly, it seems that no one knew anything about Fritzl’s crime during Elizabeth’s captivity. This includes the whole Fritzl family (6 children besides Elizabeth) and all the tenants living in their home. One reason why is that they used the front door of the premises to enter and leave the house. Fritzl, however, pulled his vehicle into the covered garage where he had access to a secret, locked entrance to the basement. As a result, no one saw him taking the washing machine downstairs or regularly bringing up garbage.

Viktor Mokhov wasn’t at all concerned with the design. His prisoners had to decorate the walls themselves with gouache.

But there are doubts about the involvement of Fritzl’s wife. Did Rosemary really not know what was going on all that time? Oddly enough the entire street says, “No.”

“She’s such a kind, generous woman!” they say. “She takes her kids to study music and play sports. And her husband is a fop. So spic and span… He acted more like a minister than an electrician!”

Fritzl’s neighbors Ingrid and Gertruda, two elderly women, defended Rosemary on camera.

“He was such a tyrant!” they said. “But Rosemary is a good woman who got married at 17!”

The question about what to do with the unfortunate home weighs heavy on the minds of Amstetten residents. The basement can be turned into a museum of horrors, or the past can simply be laid to rest.

“You’ll see. Soon something worse will happen and they’ll forget all about us!” a pharmacist told us near Fritzl’s home.

“This is private property,” said Hermann Hruber, an employee at the local mayor’s office. “The home has an owner. That individual needs to decide what will happen to the property.” So it seems that Fritzl will keep control of the situation even in prison. In Austria, breaching rights to personal property is just as severe an offense as infringing someone’s personal freedom. READ MORE