On the subject of the "wild '90s." Here is a staggering story about the "stable 2000s". It makes your hair stand on end.
From 2003 to 2007, the head of the Astrakhan Region's Organized Crime Control Directorate led a gang of killers, extortionists, and kidnappers. In 2004, the gang arranged the murder of Yevgeny Zamoskovichev, chairman of the Guild of Moscow Lawyers, who had represented people whose interests were at odds with Salekhov's. .. That same year, 2004, the gang put businessman Ruslan Mimbulatov behind bars. They detained him and began torturing him, demanding that he confess to several contract killings. The criminals beat the man, then tied him up and buried him alive. .. In the spring of 2005, members of the gang carried out an armed attack on a law office in Astrakhan, in which lawyers Igor Rozenberg and Sergei Zhalilov were killed. .. In the summer of 2005, the gang decided to kill Cossack ataman (a traditional Cossack leader) Vyacheslav Belonenko, who, according to some reports, headed a rival group. In the assassination attempt, the ataman was seriously wounded but survived. He was taken to a hospital. Since law enforcement had reason to fear another attempt on his life, officers from UBOP (the anti-organized crime directorate) were posted there as guards. However, as is not hard to guess, the guard detail was soon withdrawn on Salekhov's personal orders. Just a few hours later, hitmen burst into the hospital and finished Belonenko off. The gang also killed a patient who had witnessed the crime. I assume not everyone will agree with me, but my personal experience dealing with officers from the Interior Ministry's UBOP, observing them, their work, their everyday lives, and so on, allows me to state unequivocally that almost all of them are bandits in the literal sense of the word. This is not a figure of speech. They are bandits because they look and talk like bandits. They are bandits in the sense of the criminal code. They do exactly the same things as the people they are supposed to be catching. This was the system that had been built since the time of Rushailo . And Rushailo himself was exactly the same kind of bandit. The only difference is that he did not get a life sentence; instead, he sits in the Federation Council as a senator. Let me remind you that after UBOP was disbanded, it was turned into "Directorate E." Now they deal with political extremism.