Russian Mafia - Notable Individual Groups

Notable Individual Groups

• The Solntsevskaya Bratva: Led by Sergei "Mikhas" Mikhailov, it is Russia's largest criminal group with about 5,000 members, and is named after the Solntsevo district.
• The Dolgopruadnanskaya gang: Russia's second largest criminal group.
• The Izmaylovskaya gang: One of Russia's oldest modern gangs, it was started in the mid- to late-1980s by Oleg Ivanov; it has around 200–500 members in Moscow alone, and is named after the Izmaylovo District.
• The Tambov gang: Named after Tambov Oblast, this group has been known to dominate Saint Petersburg; the man most associated with them is Vladimir Kumarin.
• The Orekhovskaya Gang: Founded by Segei "Sylvester" Timofeyev, this group reached its height in Moscow in the 1990s. When Timofeyev died, Sergei Butorin took his place. However, he was sentenced to jail for life in 2011.
• The Odessa Mafia: The most prominent and dominant Russian criminal group operating in the US; its headquarter is in Brighton Beach.
• The Brothers' Circle: Headed by Temuri Mirzoyev, this multi-ethnic transnational group is "composed of leaders and senior members of several Eurasian criminal groups largely based in countries of the former Soviet Union but operating in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America." In 2011, US President Barack Obama and his administration named it one of four transnational organized crime groups that posed the greatest threat to US national security, and sanctioned certain key members and froze their assets. A year later, he extended the national emergency against them for another year.
• The Semion Mogilevich Organization: Based in Budapest, Hungary and headed by the crime boss of the same name, this group numbers approximately 250 members as of 1996. Its business is often tied with that of the Solntsevskaya Bratva and the Vyacheslav Ivankov Organization. Aleksey Anatolyevich Lugovcov is the second-in-command, and Vitaly Borisovich Savalovsky is the "underboss" to Mogilevich.
• The Uralmash gang of Yekaterinburg.
• The Mkhedrioni was a paramilitary group involved in organised crime led by thief-in-law Jaba Ioseliani in 1990s Georgia.
• Armenian Power, or AP-13, is a California based crime syndicate tied to Russian and Armenian organised crime.
• The city of Kazan was known for its gang culture, which later progressed into more organised, mafia-esque groups. This was known as the Kazan phenomenon.