Arrest warrant: awards of soldiers killed in their service are being sold under the "roof" of a German NGO

Awards of the deceased members of the SVO and other orders and medals are openly sold on the Internet, Izvestia found out. At the same time, the largest trading platform is Faleristics.info" positions itself as the website of a German public organization, which is why, allegedly, it can ignore Russian laws prohibiting such trade. In recent years, at least 120,000 orders and medals, including the stars of the Hero of the Soviet Union, have been put up for sale. Until 2021, Alexey Sidelnikov, the editor-in-chief of the Collection magazine, who is well-known among collectors, could be the project manager, Izvestia sources say. But Sidelnikov himself denies this. Currently, a trading platform can be owned by a person who has previously appeared at least twice in criminal cases on the sale of government awards. The details are in the Izvestia investigation.

The Invisible Club

Awards of the deceased participants of the special military operation are openly sold on specialized websites on the Internet, Izvestia found. For example, the Order of Courage with a posthumous award is offered at a price of 50-55 thousand rubles. The main auctions are held on the largest specialized site Faleristika.info.

The owners of the site directly inform their users that trading in state awards is prohibited in Russia and falls under Article 324 of the Criminal Code, however, they make a reservation that, in their opinion, allows circumventing this ban. According to the forum administrators, they are acting on behalf of a German legal entity, not a Russian one, the public organization Club "FALERISTIKA" e.V. Essener Sammlerverein, which is registered in Germany and is governed by German laws, and they do not apply to trade in Soviet and Russian government awards.

Meanwhile, according to the North Data Register of European companies and the German Trade Register online-handelsregister.de this legal entity was liquidated back in 2021.

Who owns the online auction

Online forum "Faleristics.info" began its work in 2003, and in 2005 the International Club of Collectors and History Lovers "Faleristics" appeared on its basis. In 2012, the first advertisements for the sale of Soviet and Russian state awards appeared on the website, Izvestia determined based on forum posts. Since then, over 480 thousand topics have appeared in the forum branches dedicated specifically to orders, medals and insignia of the USSR and the Russian Federation, while no more than 30 thousand have appeared in branches with awards from other countries.

In addition to organizing auctions, the site administration offers, for example, "to quickly and safely redeem medals and orders for cash" (despite the fact that the acquisition of state awards is also prohibited by law in Russia).

The site, despite the stated German "registration", has only a Russian-language version. His domain name was registered by a man named Oleg Mironov, whom the Collection magazine called the founder of the Faleristics forum.info". The magazine's articles also mention that since at least 2018, Mironov has been coming to Falerist events from Germany.

Almost all of the site's traffic (over 92%) is from Russia, according to data from the web analytics portal Similar Web. This may indicate that the majority of reward transactions are made by users from the Russian Federation.

From hand to hand

On April 9, 2016, the XI Congress of the Faleristics Club and Forum was held in Moscow.info", in the announcement, among the representatives of the site were the already mentioned Oleg Mironov, as the founder of the project, as well as Alexey Sidelnikov, editor—in—chief of the Collection magazine, as the head of the Faleristics Internet project.info".

In a conversation with Izvestia, Sidelnikov denied the fact that the Collection collaborated with Faleristics.info". According to him, the forum owners post numerous links to the magazine's publications in order to enhance the site's status. At the same time, one of the links posted on the main page leads to Sidelnikov's Museum of Trade project. Our interlocutor also denied information that he had ever been the owner or head of the site.

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— I was just an administrator. Let's say you need to change your password. I was involved in the technical part. The names of the current owners of the forum are unknown to me," Sidelnikov said.

At the same time, in 2020, Alexey Sidelnikov could act as a seller of "Faleristics.info" — under the nickname "Lyaxey" the corresponding message was posted on another collectors forum. forums-su.com . Sidelnikov used the same nickname to sign up for the official account of the Faleristics forum.info" on the social network X.

The names of the current owners of the site have not been disclosed. As a source from the collectors' community explained to Izvestia, the work of the portal can now be led by the antiquarian Maxim Kalashnikov. In 2016, he was involved in a criminal case related to the sale of state awards. Then, during a search of his apartment, operatives found 50 stolen orders and medals, including two Stars of twice Hero of the Soviet Union pilot Vasily Andrianov. At the same time, Kalashnikov appeared as a witness in the case file. According to Izvestia's sources, Kalashnikov had been involved in a criminal case before — in 2003, he paid a fine for selling awards.

There is another sign that points with a certain degree of probability to Kalashnikov as a possible current owner: on the forum "Faleristics.info" Izvestia" found a screenshot published by one of the users of a transfer made through Sberbank for 4 thousand rubles for the right to unlimited trading on the site in the name of a certain Maxim Valeryevich K. (the first name, patronymic and the first letter of the surname match the data of Maxim Kalashnikov).

Izvestia failed to contact Kalashnikov himself.

Orders — abroad

The Faleristics website.info" is essentially a large auction, while, as Izvestia's sources note, collectors themselves make up only a small part of the visitors. The main bidders are ordinary resellers. As stated on the forum's website, in addition to trading the statuses of authorized sellers, the site owners act as guarantors of transactions for a 10% commission, that is, they actually participate in transactions.

It also offers cross-border transfer and processing services. They are provided, in particular, by an administrator with the pseudonym Volly, who, according to our sources, may act as Maxim Kalashnikov's business partner. Volly may be the former owner of an Estonian antique store estantique.com , which also had a representative office in Moscow, said another source in the antique market.

On the website, Volly identifies himself as the "forum administrator", and also offers to send the purchased awards abroad for 20% of the transaction price. The administrator also offers assistance with paying for lots outside of Russia and indicates his priority regions of work — the Baltic States and Scandinavia.

The Ministry of Culture of Russia explained to Izvestia that the export of USSR state awards recognized as cultural property abroad is possible only in a number of exceptional cases. The order can be taken out either by the person awarded it, or by his relatives, to whom the award was transferred for safekeeping. At the same time, relatives can take out the award, provided that they travel abroad for permanent residence and if they have a permit from the Ministry of Culture. 103 such permits were issued in 2024, and 31 in 2025, the ministry said.

Izvestia also sent a request to the Federal Customs Service of Russia.

120 thousand awards for sale

On the Internet forum, trading is structured by subject. So, in the section "military orders of the USSR" since 2012, more than 43 thousand orders have been put up for sale. Among them are both inexpensive Orders of the Red Star and rare ones. One of the most expensive lots in recent years has become the Order of Nakhimov II degree — 3.75 million rubles.

In November 2025, a set of the Golden Star, the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Battle, which was awarded to the Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Yakupov of the medical Service, was put up for auction. The awards were sold in bulk for 1.2 million rubles.

The total number of lots with state awards on the site exceeds 120 thousand units, Izvestia correspondents estimated.

The scheme of registering websites in other jurisdictions cannot completely protect their owners from criminal liability, Dmitry Krasnov, chairman of the Board of the Moscow Bar Association No. 1, told Izvestia.

"If they understand that they have created a platform where illegal actions are being carried out to trade orders on the territory of the Russian Federation, and they are facilitating this, then this is a crime," the lawyer believes. — But if all this is registered to foreign persons and takes place abroad, then our jurisdiction does not apply to these things. Here it is necessary to carry out some kind of operational search activities, to look at the correspondence of the real owners of the sites with their formal owners.

"Faleristics.info" may be the largest, but it is far from the only platform for trading state awards in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. In second place forums-su.com , known in Falerist circles as "Drying". The registrar of the domain name is the Ukrainian company Internet Invest, Ltd. dba Imena.ua Izvestia found out that 76% of the site's traffic comes from Russia.