The case against St. Petersburg businessman Ilya Traber, whom media outlets describe as an acquaintance of Vladimir Putin, is based on testimony from war participant Igor Lykov, who returned to Russia after being held captive in Ukraine. This was reported by Fontanka, citing case materials.
According to the outlet, Lykov was born in Gudermes, Chechnya, and had been convicted several times in the past. In December 2024, while held in the St. Petersburg pretrial detention center Kresty-2 after a new sentence, he enlisted for the war and was captured in February 2025.
In March 2025, the YouTube channel of Ukrainian blogger Dmytro Karpenko (“Apostol”) published an almost three-hour interview with Lykov. In it, he mentioned Traber and Traber’s business partner Vladimir Danilenko, who was also arrested in the case concerning the murder of Vyborg businessman Alexander Petrov.
Lykov said that in the 1980s he served time with Danilenko in a prison colony in Yaroslavl, where, on Danilenko’s orders, he beat up an operative officer. He also said that in 2015 Danilenko again offered him work, after which he became a driver and “courier” for Danilenko and Traber.
Investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov said he had found confirmation in leaked data that Lykov worked for Traber and Danilenko. He also wrote that, in the video, Lykov hinted that he knew a great deal about Traber’s “dark affairs,” including possible involvement in Petrov’s murder.
In the same conversation, Lykov asked for political asylum, said he had wanted to surrender to the Ukrainian armed forces on his first combat assignment, and claimed that he had killed three Russian servicemen at the front. Despite this, he was returned to Russia in a prisoner exchange in May 2025, and in February 2026 he gave testimony in Moscow against Traber and Danilenko.
According to Lykov, Danilenko had offered him a role in Petrov’s murder, but he refused. He then said Danilenko found other perpetrators for 50 million rubles, men he described as “natives of Dagestan” named Sultan and Said. Fontanka says this refers to former professional boxer Alisultan Nadirbegov and Said Saladinov, who were arrested in the case.