- Статьи
- Society
- Massage foul: how erotic salons can collect compromising information in the interests of the SBU
Massage foul: how erotic salons can collect compromising information in the interests of the SBU
People associated with the Ukrainian national battalion "Asker" and the hacker "IT army of Ukraine" control the operation of a large network of erotic massage salons in Moscow and St. Petersburg. They also own an ad aggregator and a PR agency for the promotion of such services, Izvestia has established. For example, hosting sites of such establishments is provided by Yuri Solomakha, a native of Crimea, who was included in the Rosfinmonitoring register of terrorists and extremists for his anti-Russian activities. At the same time, the salons themselves serve as a cover for the organization of prostitution, Izvestia was convinced. And hidden cameras installed in all rooms make it possible to conduct surveillance and theoretically blackmail clients with compromising videos. It cannot be ruled out that it may even be transferred to the Ukrainian special services for further recruitment of victims, experts believe.
Fighters of the Ukrainian national battalions and erotic massage
"We have already been selected by more than 100 establishments. Join us!" — such statements attract clients from the Spice Promo agency, which has a very narrow and unusual specialization.: It promotes online exclusively erotic massage salons operating in Moscow, St. Petersburg and a number of other cities.
The agency operates in Russia, although it does not have a legal entity, it has not been assigned an INN. Closely related to it is the most popular aggregator that hosts ads for similar salons, Don M.... As Izvestia found out, this business, including the largest network of erotic salons, Massageclabs, is controlled by citizens of Ukraine, and some of them openly conducted or are conducting anti—Russian activities.
Thus, hosting services for almost all massage parlour websites associated with Spice Promo were provided by Yuri Solomakha, a native of Crimea (listed by Rosfinmonitoring in the register of terrorists and extremists). This is evidenced by data from the SecurityTrails web analytics portal in relation to specific IP addresses that belong to the Massageclabs salon network, promoted by Spice Promo.
Until 2014, Solomakha lived in Crimea, in Armyansk, but after the reunification of the peninsula with Russia, he left for the Kherson region. There, he participated in the blocking of food supplies to Crimea, which left video footage and eyewitness accounts on social media.
Then Solomakha joined the Ukrainian volunteer battalion "Asker" and publicly stated in an interview with the media about the desire of the national battalion fighters to "return to the Ukrainian Crimea."
On the Spice Promo website, among other materials, you can find examples of ads created by the agency looking for people who want to get a "high-paying job without experience." In them, girls are lured to erotic massage parlors, promising earnings of "more than 400 thousand rubles" per month and the absence of intimacy.
"News" found that sites that salons post this ad have different IP addresses, but the same number of counters "Yandex Metrics" and Google Analytics (collect statistics on visits). For example, counter 35667992 has four sites with job offers for girls at once. Which confirms that the same people may be behind all of them. Moreover, one of the websites with this counter is already openly talking about escort vacancies.
One of the domains where this advertisement was published is owned by a certain Anna Boeva. According to Izvestia's sources, she is a native of the Luhansk region, and now has a registration in Kharkiv. She also directly owns the domains of several large and popular massage parlors in Moscow and St. Petersburg - they have different names, but are united under the umbrella brand "Massageclabs". As follows from the data of web analytics services, the domains were transferred to Ukrainian Anna Boeva from Anna Dodonova, a native of the Komi Republic, registered in Moscow.
Dodonova ran a number of massage parlors until a criminal case was opened against her in 2018 under the article on organizing prostitution. On the portal of the courts of general jurisdiction of the city of Moscow, there is information about the choice of a preventive measure in the form of a ban on certain actions. There is no information about the further progress of the case in the judicial database.
According to Izvestia's sources, Dodonova's alleged husband is a citizen of Ukraine, Valentin Kupriyanov, originally from Nikopol. In 2011, when Dodonova launched her salon network (which has now become Combat), the couple had a daughter. At that moment, the man was working in the IT department of a large Russian company.
According to Izvestia, Kupriyanov is registered as an individual entrepreneur in the IT sector in his native Nikopol. Judging by his closed social networks, he is a member of the IT Army of Ukraine group (unites hackers attacking Russian infrastructure) and a number of other anti-Russian communities, and now lives in Bangkok.
Supervised massage
Each such salon has hidden cameras in its premises, motivating their placement with the issue of masseuse safety, said an interlocutor of Izvestia who is familiar with the activities of Massage Clubs. This practice is also confirmed by the materials of criminal cases involving massage parlors. For example, the presence of cameras in them is mentioned in the verdict of the Khamovnicheskiy court of Moscow — in 2019, one of the employees of the now-closed erotic massage salon on Ostozhenka was found guilty under the article on prostitution (the salon was part of the Anna Dodonova network).
"The owners are least interested in monitoring the safety of the girls," Mikhail Ignatov, a former Moscow Police Department operative, told Izvestia. — They are much more interested in monitoring clients and collecting compromising information about those who go to these brothels. After all, many people do not come there for a massage. And the higher the level of this salon, the more high-status the clientele there is. These may be officials, deputies, serious businessmen, bankers who value their reputation.
The cameras are installed so that the client cannot detect them under any circumstances, and the footage can be stored for a long time until a suitable occasion, Ignatov added. Blackmail itself is often needed not to make a profit, but to force the target to commit certain actions.
"It is possible that if Ukrainians are behind this, the footage may be transferred to Ukraine for further use against the person of interest," the expert admitted.
In fact, we may be talking about one of the forms of blackmail of people who, according to the same Ukrainian special services, may have useful information for them.
Izvestia has sent a request to the Interior Ministry regarding the facts revealed during our investigation.
Massage or prostitution
Salons position their services as "massage without intimacy," but in fact prostitution flourishes in such establishments, experts say.
According to Izvestia estimates based on aggregator data, there are currently about 60 establishments offering erotic massage in Moscow alone. The owner, as a rule, keeps not one, but several salons at once, the source of the publication explained. They are registered to inconspicuous LLC companies, the main activity of which is the rental of real estate.
The correspondent of the publication visited a number of similar establishments in St. Petersburg under the guise of a girl who wants to find a job.
One of the salons is located on the ground floor of an ordinary apartment building, there are no signs outside.
— The minimum cost of the program is 3.5 thousand rubles. There are programs for 5 thousand, 6 thousand and even for 15 thousand, a girl gets 40%," the administrator explained to the Izvestia correspondent, specifying that the client will need to do a massage completely naked. — Each addition to the program is plus one thousand rubles. It already suits you. Of course, this is not an official job. There is a day shift from 12 to 22 o'clock, and a night shift from 22 to 12 o'clock. It is necessary to work at least 2.5 shifts per week.
Earlier, in the summer of 2025, a correspondent of Izvestia took part in exposing one of these salons on Krupskaya Street in Moscow. After choosing a masseuse, the girl told the journalist that she was entering a "massage session": "You and I will have a private room for an hour. You'll take a shower, and our program will include classic sex with protection."
After a while, she added that "we can't write the truth on the website."
After that, police officers entered the institution and took everyone to the department. Later, another large massage parlor on Mira Avenue in Moscow was caught in prostitution according to a similar scheme. After an operational experiment, his administrator was detained, accusing her of organizing prostitution. The Ostankino court sentenced her to a fine.
The organization of work in the salons in question was clearly structured: the administrator accepted new girls, set a schedule for them, assigned clients, kept order and paid salaries. There were up to eight girls per shift in the salon, who came on a free schedule.
These salons have several things in common: in addition to the fact that their websites on the Internet are promoted by the Spice Promo agency, they are all posted on the aggregator site of such salons, Don M....
The largest aggregator
Don M... advertises the services of salons operating in Moscow, St. Petersburg and some other cities of Russia and Kazakhstan. There is information about the work schedule, the availability of masseuses, interviews with them and photo reports from salons are published. The catalog also contains individual masseuses — over 2 thousand questionnaires.
And although the website states that the project does not advertise sex services, some masseuses have profiles on sex service websites, Izvestia found out.
The aggregator's website states that the project is led by a professional photographer specializing in the nude genre. On specialized forums dedicated to sex services, where the creator of the site was an active participant, he said that salons often invite him for commercial filming of their girls. According to him, more than half of the clients in each institution come to masseuses from his website.
The author of the project does not disclose any information about himself, except for the mail for communication. However, based on the metadata of the images, Izvestia managed to identify the alleged creator of the site. This is, with a high degree of probability, a photographer from Zelenograd Dmitry Bugayenko. According to open sources, until December 2019, his wife Maria Urvanova had her own photo studio, but in 2020 they closed the business and emigrated to Canada.
Bugayenko's indirect involvement in "Don M..." is also confirmed by the fact that the author of the project was active in sex forums from the moment the site appeared in 2016 until the summer of 2020, that is, before Bugayenko moved to Canada. He is currently shooting commercials in Toronto. Izvestia tried to contact Bugayenko, but he did not answer questions and blocked our correspondent.
At the moment, the aggregator can be controlled by the same people as the Spice Promo agency, to whom Bugayenko could sell or transfer the project before leaving. This is indicated, in particular, by the fact that one of the agency's employees, whom Izvestia found through Bugayenko's social media, is also referred to there as the "curator" of "Don M...".
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
