The sectarians who arrived in the Ulyanovsk region "for the tsar" abandoned the past

Followers of the totalitarian sect "Russian Orthodox Church — Tsarist Empire", who came for the "spiritual leader", previously convicted of serious crimes Leonid Vlasov, burned their documents and completely abandoned the past. Izvestia correspondent Igor Kaporikov visited the village of Aybashi on February 13, where the girls who disappeared in St. Petersburg may be located, and found out how the cult supporters live there.

"The village of Aybashi looks like an ordinary outback. But hidden behind the blind fences is a closed community with its own rules, hierarchy, and even its own "king." This is where the Zhvaleva sisters from St. Petersburg may end up," the journalist described.

The Izvestia film crew tried to get into one of the houses and came across signs, cameras, warnings and an aggressive local resident there, who, seeing the cameras, began to push the correspondent out of the courtyard, forcing him out with an iron door, which eventually broke off its hinges. All the people caught in the cameras are dressed like monks — women wear long sundresses and scarves, and men wear beards and overcoats. One of the women living in the area, named Dorothea, agreed to give a short comment on the possible whereabouts of the recruited girls.

"On Saturday (February 7th. — Ed.) They said something, we don't know, we haven't talked for a long time. It's been a year since we've lived here," she said.

Dorothea, as it turned out later, came to the settlement for "grace", after listening to the lectures of the "tsar" on the Internet, sold her property, burned her documents and completely got rid of the past. Now she has only faith and community left. The interview lasted only a couple of minutes, then the journalists were pushed out into the street again.

"I told the police, and they sent a video pretty quickly of a woman who looked like their mother, and I already realized, yes, that they had apparently been taken away and taken somewhere," Alexander Zhvalev, the father of the missing girls, told Izvestia.

The founder of the "Russian Orthodox Church — Tsarist Empire" is Vlasov, who is also known as "Zosima", "Patriarch", "messenger of God". He's famous for his convictions for serious crimes. In 2025, representatives of law enforcement agencies detained the founder of the sect and his associates, accusing them of promoting terrorism and creating an organization that infringes on the rights of citizens. However, despite this, the self-proclaimed ruler manages to maintain his activities even from the pre-trial detention center (SIZO).

"He has (Vlasov. — Ed.) there is a sect, well, its own groups in the Volgograd region, in the Ryazan region, that is, in fact, in more than 30 regions of the Russian Federation, he managed to find these people," said Igor Ivanishko, a forensic religious expert and expert of the State Duma Committee on the Development of Civil Society.

As noted, it is difficult to eradicate the relevant associations as long as there is no relevant court ruling or they are not officially recognized as extremist.

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The disappearance of two girls, 18—year-old Marina and 11-year-old Irina, became known a day earlier. At that time, they had already been missing for several days. Their father said that they could be with members of the totalitarian sect "Russian Orthodox Church — Tsarist Empire." By evening, the girls, wearing headscarves, contacted their mother's house, who lured them into the cult. According to the eldest of the sisters, she made the decision to join her parents on her own because her father forced both her and her younger sister to take cards for transportation and passage to school.

The next day, it became known that the Izvestia storyline allowed a boy to be rescued from the sect, whose grandmother told about his poor health and depression. It was clarified that his mother also took him to the sectarian community. The woman said that children who have fallen into the community "take an oath" — among other things, they cannot receive education and use medicines. In addition, minors are forced to fast, which significantly weakens their bodies.

At the same time, the press service of the Investigative Committee (IC) of Russia reported on an organized check on the incident. It was noted that the chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, instructed Pavel Vymentsov, head of the GSU in St. Petersburg, to report on the progress of the inspection, as well as to join the search for the missing.

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