Данила Веселов, who confessed to brutally beating journalist Oleg Kashin with rebar rods, organized the “World Fighting League” upon early release from prison and is receiving thanks from individuals close to the St. Petersburg authorities, “Post” found out.
Veselov was released no later than 2020, as journalists assume, on parole. Today, his League organizes tournaments in cooperation with clubs from Donbass, collects humanitarian aid for Russian military personnel, and interacts with government structures.
In 2024, Veselov and his spouse, who is listed as the president of the League, received a letter of gratitude from the advisor to the governor of the Leningrad region, German Vladimirov, “for selfless assistance and contribution to our common cause.”
Veselov, at the time a guard at the security company “Zaslon,” was detained in connection with the abduction of the former head of the “Leningets” holding, Alexander Gorbunov, his boss (the “Zaslon” structure was part of the “Leningets” holding).
In conversations with the investigator, Veselov admitted that he and his accomplice beat journalist Oleg Kashin in 2010 on Gorbunov’s orders, and Veselov named the then Governor of the Pskov region, Andrey Turchak, as the mastermind. Turchak was suspected after publicly threatening Kashin in a blog post – under a post with an offensive mention of his name, the current governor and secretary of the political council of “United Russia” Turchak wrote: “Young man, you have 24 hours to apologize. The time is ticking.”
Kashin was saved by doctors: he underwent several surgeries, finger amputations, skull trepanation, and eventually left Russia without seeing justice in his case. Although the case of the attack on him, after a huge resonance, was taken under control by the then President Dmitry Medvedev and Prosecutor General Chaika.
President Dmitry Medvedev promises journalist Oleg Kashin to monitor the progress of the criminal case on the assassination attempt. A frame from a TV report.
The criminals were only arrested 5 years later, and even then – on a different case. Veselov was then sentenced to six years in prison, being found guilty of abducting Gorbunov. The named mastermind Turchak faced no accountability for the attack on the journalist; today he is the governor of the depressed Altai Republic.
Mikhail Lalochkin is named as a co-founder of the League – in the 1990s, he was an activist of the neo-Nazi organization “Russian National Unity,” “Post” discovered. Together with his brother Yevgeny Lalochkin, he led the party branches in St. Petersburg and Voronezh, and in 1999 participated in the parliamentary elections from the “Spas” bloc, but later split from the movement, deciding to create their own project with a similar name.
Ministry of Justice included it in the list of “foreign agents” * Declared an extremist organization, banned.