Animal husbandry (18+)

Who needed to kill a whole herd of horses in Altai? Special report "New"

In early January, a terrible event happened in the Petropavlovsk region of the Altai Territory: 53 dead horses were found in the mountains, between the villages of Kamyshenka and Solovyikha. 

The horses, most of which were pregnant mares and young animals, lay on the snow in unnatural positions, hooves up, a few meters apart. The foals huddled close to their mothers before they died. 

The criminologists who arrived at the scene found two bullet holes in the horses near the shoulder blades. The shooter aimed straight at the heart. 

Sniper accurate.

The dead herd belonged to 57-year-old farmer Nikolai Drokov from neighboring Alekseevka. 

“If this person or gang, I don’t know, is not stopped, then tomorrow or in the summer, at any moment, they will drive up to the herd, shoot and say that it was so. People will go to the mountains for berries, and these fascists, monsters, can destroy them, ”Drokov said in an interview with Altaiskaya Pravda journalists. “It is important that they do not go unpunished…”

What happened to Drokov's horses is still being discussed with horror in local media and social networks. 

Horses in the Altai Territory are treated reverently. They participate in sports races, go on hikes with tourists and even treat children with special needs from all over RUSSIA for hippotherapy. Often, horses are bred for MEAT, which is widely in demand among the Kazakhs living in the neighborhood. 

A horse in Altai is a breadwinner. That is why the locals do not believe that the beast that went to such a monstrous murder is from their own, “village”.

The investigation into the massacre is under the personal control of the HEAD of the Altai police, Lieutenant General Andrey Podolyan. Immediately after the discovery of the shot herd, a criminal case was initiated - on the destruction of someone else's property on a large scale (Article 167 of the Criminal Code), according to which the criminals face up to two years in prison.

Correspondents of "Novaya" went to the outback of the Altai Territory to understand why here for several years innocent animals have been paying for human mistakes.

Sausage or life

We arrive in the Petropavlovsk region a week after the massacre of the horses. By that time, gossip about the motives for the murder was already in full swing in the villages:

“We have versions that are for entertainment,” the saleswoman from the Altai store says quietly. “Here everyone was shaking who the hunters were, they were checking weapons. But ours cannot have such weapons! Very expensive…

“My sister, we are twins, we both grieved for the horses, I even cried, they were so defenseless, I always felt sorry for them,” the grandmother in a blue knitted hat lamented bitterly. - This, probably, was done by someone out of good intentions so that the horses would not suffer. To hoof snow, to look for grass, you know, this is also a mockery.

But the most widely dispersed is another version - shot out of revenge. This was categorically stated by a local deputy, chairman of the committee of the Altai Legislative Assembly on environmental management Sergey Serov:

“I consider this to be an outrageous incident. The situations that happened before were related to the theft of animals, committed for the sake of profit. In the Petropavlovsk region, the criminals obviously acted out of revenge. Because of the personality conflict, innocent animals suffered.

Even during the war, no one raised a hand to kill a horse, this is the noblest animal, and here a whole herd with small foals was shot.

Nikolai Drokov himself, the owner of the herd, rejected this version as best he could in numerous interviews:

“I didn’t quarrel with anyone to take revenge like that. Maybe someone crossed the road. Well, let them shoot me, what have the horses to do with it. I grew them not for myself, but for my son, for my daughter ... The daughter walks with tears in her eyes, the son can hardly restrain himself. My grandson loves horses, he is very worried, I don’t know how to look into his eyes.

We arranged an interview with farmer Drokov before our arrival and called again the day before to confirm the meeting. Nikolai did not pick up the phone for a long time, but the second time he nevertheless answered and confusedly, cheerfully, losing his thoughts, began to cry out that he would be "very glad to see us."

Alekseevka is located 130 km from Biysk, the second largest city in the Altai Territory. The track here is bumpy in places, but almost does not wind. At the entrance to the village we meet a lonely herd of two dozen dark brown and gray horses. They crowded along the edge of the road, trying to get to the other side. There, where the mountains begin, where there is not a single soul for several tens of kilometers.

Once in Alekseyevka, we call Nikolai to clarify the address of his house, but he suddenly says that he will not be able to meet with us: he is sick, has a temperature, “he can’t even speak.” And instead of himself, he sends his son to us, "the same owner of horses."

Roman Drokov, who drove up to us ten minutes later, appeared to be about thirty-five years old. A tall, black hat with a pom-pom barely covers his ears, his face is weathered and reddened from the cold. His right eye squints from the blinding snow. Abundantly, inelegantly cursing.

“What’s there to tell,” Roman begins incredulously. - Well, words cannot explain, ****, some scoundrels, ****, shot the horses. They could at least say that if they interfered with someone ...

It seems that Drokov is not happy with the attention of journalists and would gladly get rid of us. But we persuade him to tell about what happened in more detail and it would be better in another place - all this time we are standing on the road.

Hesitating, he agrees to take us to the farm, "but not for long - there is a lot of work."

The Drokovy farm is located on the outskirts of Alekseevka near the Solovyikha River. The snow near the darkened sheds is streaked with traces from a tractor, a gray-brown dog rushes about on a leash, someone's gnawed carcass is lying next to a rickety booth, horses in the paddock languidly savor the hay. Sheep bleating is heard.

Somewhere in the depths of the farm cows are grazing, more than 700 heads, but we will not see them (other farmers will tell us about them later). To our question, how many cattle are on the farm, Roman hesitates again:

- So ... There is a little.

Drokov talks about the family economy briefly and reluctantly. His family has been engaged in horse breeding for the last 12 years. Horses - "meat direction": outbred, crossbreeds of the Soviet heavy truck. They are sold to live buyers from Kazakhstan and Novosibirsk or handed over to meat processing plants. One one and a half year old foal from the Drokovy farm costs an average of about 50 thousand rubles.

“We didn’t get rich, and we didn’t get poorer: we don’t fill the price,” Roman vaguely answers the question of how much money such a business brings to the family.

According to him, after a recent incident, “20 odd horses” remained on the farm. We are wondering if we saw his lonely herd on the way to Alekseevka.

The novel evades again:

Maybe ours...

Drokov says that in the summer, when work is going on in the fields, the horses graze on the Drokovs' own land, fenced by an electric shepherd (a fence with wires that shock the animal if it touches them). And in late autumn, when the crop is harvested, the horses are sent to the so-called "free pasture": they look for pasture under the snow on their own.

- The horses go further there, to the mountains, where everything is overgrown with weeds, abandoned fields. Why do they feel good in the mountains? In winter, a lot of snow can fall, and in the mountains the wind blows everything away. They start on the hills: they dug about ten centimeters - and that's it, the grass is dry, they collect it.

The herd, which was subsequently shot, was released by the Drokovs even before the New Year, in total there were 68 horses in it. The owners visited him in the mountains two or three times a week. Drokov's friend saw the horses for the last time on January 5th. Then the fog lifted, and the Drokovs decided to postpone the trip. Already on the 8th in the evening in a log, 5 km from Kamyshenka, 53 corpses were found.

- How did we know about it? Roman asks. - We got a call from a distant acquaintance, he drove by on a snowmobile.

We went there the next day, and there are a bunch of them, covered with snow, they were still melted. But the eyes are already pecked by crows.

Then they went and wrote a statement to the police. We started with metal detectors on horses ... Bullets were found. They climbed with the investigator, they could not understand where they were shooting from. It seems they marked the place, but there were no shell casings. Maybe they were shot in another place, and they ran, wounded, then here. Why didn't they just run away? Yeah, we didn't get it either. Nobody can understand. Usually you drive up to them, to the bales, haystacks, ****, 500 meters, they are already starting to move and run away. Even we are sometimes not recognized. I'll go on a snowmobile, sometimes I circle for an hour.

Animals that are freely grazing (popularly "stray cattle") are the subject of a long-standing conflict between Altai livestock breeders and grain farmers. The owners of the herds say that such grazing has a beneficial effect on meat-producing horses, especially foal mares and their offspring - "they do not stagnate in the stables." Farmers assure that there is simply no “free” land in the Petropavlovsk region: “Each piece is fenced off and belongs to someone.” And they ask pastoralists to graze horses on their fenced land, because otherwise they will destroy winter crops, and the owners of the fields will suffer damage.

Previously, the farmers themselves found control over stray animals and did not even hide their methods: if talking with the owners did not help, they shot one or two heads as a second warning. Last year, seven horses were killed in this way at the local farmer Alexei Zazdravnykh. Those involved in the murder were never found (or they did not want to look), but after that incident, Zazdravnykh fenced about two thousand hectares on his land, set up a booth there and hired shepherds. Controls livestock on a snowmobile.

But what happened to the Drokov horses has never happened before in the Petropavlovsk region.

Roman Drokov admits that their horses also entered foreign territory from time to time.

“But no one told us that they were in the way. No one wrote, no one turned to the police: take action. If there were complaints, we would go then and collect them. And now, what can I say ... Right now, everyone believes that our horses go to the lands of others, that we use them at their expense, and they pay taxes for these lands. Now they are thinking about how to introduce such a law to remove horses from the fields. Well, in that case, you will eat soy sausage (horse meat is added to some types of sausages, for example, to servelat. - E.K.), - Roman grins sadly. - Yes, we understand, our fault, that they, ****, somewhere went to a foreign land. ****, but it's wrong to do so at once, to kill a whole herd. If a person comes in, why, will they also shoot at him?

We ask him:

Have you had a fight with someone lately?

- Well, maybe some people, ****, had hostility, but it didn’t happen that a man was standing here and I quarreled with him for the whole village. There were [minor quarrels], but we did not attach such importance to them.

Dead herd

The killed herd remained lying in the mountains: it is impossible to take the animals from there while investigative actions are being carried out. We ask Drokov to show us this place, but he refuses:

- Oh-she-she, it's 15 kilometers to go through the mountains. At that time I was driving a tractor. We won't go there now.

Pyotr Visloguzov, the cousin of Nikolai Drokov, agrees to take us to the place where the horses were shot. A squat, stocky man with deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

- Terrible, girls! As before, the Nazis shot the prisoners, so they shot the horses of the poor ...

Visloguzov is silent, then hotly adds:

- Well, this is not a way out. We need a law. There will be no law, it will come to a shootout of people.

We must not allow brother to go against brother, man against man. Now the horses have suffered, the next victims will be people.

We drive out of Alekseevka in the direction of Kamyshenka in an expensive brand new off-road vehicle of Visloguzov and soon turn off to the side of the road. We shake across the field on potholes, we move the dam, and then - uphill. On the left side, in a lowland, one can see a large paddock in which someone's cows and horses graze peacefully near haystacks.

“Here, look at how to do it right: the cattle is fenced, they don’t touch it. Nobody stole a horse from here, nobody shot him,” Visloguzov comments in passing.

We go further, and a completely different picture appears before our eyes, not like a rural pastoral. Frosted bushes, behind it in the log - a stream and an endless white field, merging with the horizon. It is littered with dozens of horse corpses. Hearing the car, a huge black cloud of crows rises into the sky and dissolves into the fog.

It's cold, a cold wind is blowing.

“Be careful, there may be wolves!” warns Visloguzov when we decide to get closer to the horses. He himself remains waiting by the car.

Once on the other side of the stream, we notice that many horses are already covered with snow, one pregnant belly sticks out like a black mound. The foals are frozen with their hooves up, their bodies are gnawed by foxes, their intestines are out and scattered across the snow. Several horses had their skin cut off in a square, on a frozen, blood-red patch of meat, round, even holes are visible - these were forensic experts getting bullets from the corpses.

There is a rumor going around Alekseyevka that the police officers who examined the place of the massacre did not find any traces of a car or a snowmobile. And therefore, a version quickly spread among the villagers that the killers themselves were on horseback, which is why the horses let them so close to themselves.

“It’s very hard for me that my cousin’s horses were shot, but I don’t defend him,” Visloguzov says when we drive back. “Imagine, a herd came into a field of 160 hectares with winter wheat, stopped, ate, and then the farmer did not receive 40 million money,” Peter is annoyed. - If he goes to the tax office tomorrow, what will he say? That Drok's horses ate everything, I won't pay you? What about your workers who need to be paid wages? Well, not for drokovy horses, all this was sown!

Visloguzov is a farmer and he himself has repeatedly faced losses due to spoiled crops. He is the DIRECTOR of Progress LLC. That was the name of the Alekseevsky collective farm, where his parents worked all their lives. The collective farm was one of the top ten in the Altai Territory, but fell into decay in the 90s.

In 2010, Visloguzov was appointed chairman, and he “little by little” began to restore the economy destroyed by his predecessors. He began to sue and buy up the ancestral lands of the collective farm. I took out a loan of 86 million rubles. The first year I sowed on one tractor.

He says that he hardly slept, turned gray.

Now the Visloguzov family has the largest farm in Alekseevka. The area of ​​land "Progress" - both own and leased - is 8500 hectares. 

This year alone, Visloguzov spent 57 million rubles to expand his holdings.

The farmer boasts: in 12 years he bought imported equipment worth 600 million rubles, built five large warehouses for storing grain, three complexes for its processing, resumed the work of the oil workshop (“Our rapeseed oil is in no way inferior to OLIVE OIL. Behind him is the priest himself from Kemerovo is coming!").

- Together with cooks, accounting, aunts and nannies, we have about 36 people. They work for ten, drink for seven,” Visloguzov jokes. - We do not have equalization, there is "earned - get it." If there were no violations, a person is additionally charged 40% of the direct salary from the bonus fund. There is also payment in kind: it is allowed to take hay at a reduced price. We also have “experienced” ones: worked for three years - 3% is charged, 5 years - 5%. Three months - January, February, March, when there is no work in the fields - 20% of the total direct salary is also charged. The goal is to bring the people's earnings up to a million per season. Now we are reaching 500-600 thousand.

Everything would be fine if the work was not interfered with by stray cattle, complains Visloguzov. In the Petropavlovsky district, according to him, now there are “only two villains” who let horses go free to graze: Nikolai Drokov and Sergey Potapov. Both have already been sued several times for spoiled crops, the litigation lasted for a long time, but the claims were eventually rejected due to "lack of evidence."

- And then Drokov went out onto the porch and laughed: “Well, what did we tell you? Our horses have grazed and will grazed,” Visloguzov cites the words of his cousin.

The farmer drives onto the road to Alekseyevka, but immediately turns off again and drives straight across the field deeper into the field. The snow is scattered here, hoof marks and horse feces are visible around. This field belongs to Progress.

“In the spring, my workers mixed up the seeds: they mixed winter wheat into soft wheat, and take it, soft, and go away, and winter went into growth, blossomed and gained a powerful root system,” says Visloguzov. - I said to Nikolai Petrovich: “Do not let the cattle come here, let it grow. If the experiment succeeds, I will continue to sow winter crops using this technology.” Now look. One piece of shit is now lying around. Everything was dug up, everything was destroyed.

Visloguzov gets out of the car, digs up the snow and pulls out wilted wheat sprouts.

- Imagine you went camping, laid a rug under the bottom, covered yourself with a blanket. Warm, good. And if the blanket has holes, will you keep warm? It's the same with plants. If they violated her peace, it is known, interrupted her sleep, she received stress and died.

On the way to Alekseevka, Visloguzov receives a call from Pavel Zazdravnykh, Alexei's father, whose cattle were also shot a year ago. He says that Sergei Potapov will soon drive his horses into the mountains through the fields of Visloguzov.

“We won’t let him into our fence, so tomorrow all the horses will be in your winter one ...” Zazdravnykh warns.

“Why should they be in my winter season?” Peter is surprised.

- They will go home, they are accustomed to walking on the other side. And where is your winter one?

— In the first and second brigades.

- So you yourself said in the spring: "Let them go there."

Who did I say that to? My only request was not to walk in my fields, especially in winter, - Visloguzov gets excited.

Zazdravnyh hangs up.

“Here, girls, the farmer is calling in front of you,” Peter turns to us. What should I do as a farm manager? Call the person who owns these horses? Or, too, take a machine gun and protect your property?

Visloguzov decides to go to the police and talk to the investigator who is in charge of the murder of Drokov's horses. We drive up to a two-story brick building with a Russian flag on the roof. The small dim hall is empty. On the left at the entrance there is a stand with information about people who went missing more than ten years ago, and wanted criminals (among them, for example, there is a young guy who left the military unit without permission). On another stand, flyers are hanging, reminding of the inadmissibility of driving while intoxicated.

The hall is separated from the stairs and the corridor by a lattice. While we are waiting for the investigator, a man in a dark jacket and cap is taken out in handcuffs, the convoy is armed with machine guns.

After 15 minutes, policeman Yevgeny Voevodkin comes out to us, a young, short-haired man with glasses. He was at the scene of the massacre among the first. He was hostile to the presence of the press during a conversation with Visloguzov:

- I understand that correspondents cover the problem, but why is the police still the cornerstone?

“Because there is no one else to turn to the authorities,” the farmer throws up his hands.

“The police are in charge of the order,” we interject.

- Yes, what are you? And you read the law of the Altai Territory number 46. It says what powers the police have. And before asking questions, please contact the press service. From now on, communication only through her.

Voevodkin asks us to leave the meeting room - a tiny nook behind plastic partitions right at the entrance to the station - to continue talking with Visloguzov one on one. But we can hear everything: the policeman is almost screaming.

“I try to understand you, citizens, in any matter,” Voevodkin gets excited. “We did everything for our part, we documented everything. We are ready to meet even now and discuss this problem, because it will not disappear either tomorrow or in the spring. Let's offer solutions. We can return to the old SS guards, we will drive the cattle to the barnyards and hand them over with a fine. If the man does not come, the horses are yours. I really understand this situation: Drokov’s herd is not tagged, he receives food from your fields, and you pay taxes. Why is the administration sitting? Is he looking at us? So we don't charge taxes!

Петр Вислогузов выходит из полиции расстроенный.

Глава Алексеевского совета — Юрий Дроков, брат Николая, — поговорить с нами для публикации отказался.

Неучтенные жизни

Алексеевцы считают, что виновен в гибели лошадей один человек — сам Николай Дроков. Глядя на то, как его лошади продолжают, как и раньше, свободно пастись по чужим землям, в селе говорят: «Не жалко Дрокову своего же скота. Экономит, держит их впроголодь. Легче их выпустить и бросить».

After the shooting of the horses, Drokov's farming methods were talked about throughout the district. Among other things, the farmer was reproached for the fact that his cattle were not tagged and vaccinated. The villagers became worried: “If some kind of plague breaks out, all the horses and cows will immediately be slaughtered and burned, honest people will suffer, and then who will help them restore their economy?” The local veterinarian, residents of Alekseevka quote him, answered questions about vaccination as follows: “He doesn’t have livestock, how are we going to vaccinate him if he is not listed?”

Drokov is also reminded of such a case:

- He has workers, illegal, they are not taken into account. This year there was a case: a young boy, 28 years old, worked as a tractor driver. Summer, heat, the head turns off. I decided to correct the thread in the imported press, and a hand got under this thread, it was tightened. It’s good that he didn’t wind up everything, didn’t fill up. He pulled out his hand, it was shattered. They cut off his hand,” a resident of Alekseevka told us, asking not to mention his name. His words were confirmed by other villagers. - What's next? No, he would say: “Son, such a thing happened, well, at least come to me as a watchman.” Well, at least he would have done something for this person who worked for him. And he made this kid write a paper stating that he has no claims. And when it came to getting a disability, he was given the third group, the worker, because the left hand. He went to the prosecutor's office to complain,

Nikolai himself, after we asked him about this guy, said that he “always helped him” and would continue to help, including with a prosthesis: “But where to go, he is good for my sons.” When asked about the work, Drokov replied that he “offered to be a watchman, but so far he (the injured guy. - E.K.) has no time.” He refused to comment on the difficulties with obtaining a disability, citing the fact that he "does not know how it was."

Residents of Kamyshenka, which is closest to the place of execution, believe that the killers were "hired", from among the visitors, and are afraid of a new reprisal.

- The villagers did not raise a hand against defenseless animals. No matter how they start shooting others! - outraged toothless grandmother in a gray headscarf, with whom we talked in line at the bank. Our village is not ours now. We have fewer natives left than visitors.

The villagers sympathize with the horses, probably because they themselves have not kept their own cattle for a long time. Buying meat, eggs and MILK in the store is now much cheaper and easier than keeping your own animal.

“And those who keep livestock work hard: they have no days off, no holidays,” adds the pensioner. - Do you know the advertisement "House in the Village"? Yeah, yeah, got up at five o'clock: who grunts, who byaka, who mumbles. If you lay down at 12 at night, it's already good.

There is little work in the village itself, everyone is spinning as best they can and knows how. In the region, there is a widespread “business” built on the birth of children: “a daughter gives birth, abandons a child, a mother adopts” - and receives maternity capital along with other social benefits.

The Altai hinterland does not live, but survives. The minimum subsistence level pension in the region is 9,573 rubles. To buy coal for the winter on average - 15 thousand, firewood - 25. The rise in price of a large box of matches from 10 to 25 rubles significantly hits the pocket. Sellers in shops write down debtors in special notebooks.

People also drink on credit. There may not be food, but they still take booze. The most popular ALCOHOL is local draft beer and moonshine, which is sold quietly, despite the prohibitions. The villagers tell how “men take one and a half rubles home in queues at night, then, when they receive a pension, they carry it back in a bunch.” When money is very tight, they take “funfiriki” in the pharmacy - cheap alcohol-containing tinctures and lotions. They have poisoned (and even died) people all over Russia more than once.

- They say on TV that alcohol consumption has decreased by 40%. What kind of alcohol? Licensed, maybe. And the fact that we sell moonshine stills of any choice, bottles are with any filler, please, drive - this is not taken into account! the pensioner says frankly. We have everything in the village. The water was brought up. There is no hot water, but the heaters have been hung up - we are happy about that. Of course, we did it ourselves, at our own expense, saved up. The pension is small, it’s good if there is more than the minimum wage - 16 thousand. And then prices are constantly growing: I bought matches, SALT, sausages, cheese - and there are not a thousand. Recently, oil was relatively cheap - 340 rubles. And now you can't buy it for 400. The villager lives only by what grows in the courtyard. True, it will grow - then it will be difficult to sell somewhere.

***

When we returned to Moscow, we learned that the village council of Kamyshenka had fined the Drokovs two thousand rubles. He considered the dead horses to be stray cattle, because they were found in foreign territory. Nikolay is thinking of appealing this fine.

And the corpses of animals have already been lowered “on the plain”: the fur farm has long been interested in them. For dog food.

Alekseevka village, Altai Territory