The case against Traber is based on testimony from his former driver, who returned from Ukrainian captivity

The case against Traber is based on testimony from his former driver, who returned from Ukrainian captivity

Fontanka reports this, citing case materials.

Igor Lykov, who worked as a driver for St. Petersburg businessman and Vladimir Putin acquaintance Ilya Traber, had been convicted multiple times and, after a sentence in a new case, enlisted for the war in December 2024, after which he was captured. In March 2025, Ukrainian blogger Dmitry Karpenko’s channel released an almost three-hour video with Lykov.

In it, he asked for “political asylum,” said that he himself had wanted to surrender to the Armed Forces of Ukraine on his very first combat mission, and that at the front he had killed three Russian servicemen — a lieutenant, a sergeant and a private — who, among other things, beat soldiers and “zeroed out the three-hundredths.”

He also mentioned Traber and his business partner Vladimir Danilenko, who was also arrested in the case concerning the murder of Vyborg businessman Alexander Petrov.

Journalist Andrei Zakharov notes that he found confirmation in leaks that Lykov worked for Traber and Danilenko. As Zakharov added, in the video Lykov also “hinted that thanks to this he knows a lot about Traber’s dark affairs, including his involvement in the murder of another St. Petersburg authority figure — the ‘boss’ of Vyborg, Alexander Petrov.”

In May 2025, he returned to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange, and in February 2026 he gave testimony in Moscow against Traber and Danilenko, Fontanka writes. Lykov claimed that Danilenko offered him the job of killing Petrov, and after his refusal, “for 50 million rubles,” found other people — “natives of Dagestan” Sultan and Said. According to Fontanka, this refers to former professional boxer Alisultan Nadirbegov and Said Saladinov.

Both of them were charged in the case concerning Petrov’s murder in 2020.

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