Just after dawn in Sevastopol, a powerful explosion ripped through a quiet square in a residential area of the Russian-occupied Crimean port city. Hidden inside a rubbish bin, a bomb with around 500g of TNT went off on 13 August as Robert Shageev, the deputy commander of a Russian Black Sea fleet submarine brigade, walked past in his naval uniform. He was killed instantly.
Within hours, investigators had a suspect. Police detained Margarita Reutt, a 32-year-old from Sochi, the Russian resort city about 300 miles across the Black Sea from Sevastopol. During a search, they said they found a remote control believed to have been used to set off the bomb that killed Shageev, a former commander of Ukraine’s only submarine who switched allegiance to Russia in 2014 when Moscow annexed Crimea.
According to the security service, she confessed to the attack and said a handler linked to Ukrainian intelligence had promised her a large payment in cryptocurrency and documents that would let her leave Russia afterwards.
Friends remember Margarita Reutt as warm and sociable, but also unusually drawn to adventure and risk. The FSB also said Reutt showed no remorse.
These claims could not be independently verified, and Russian security agencies have previously publicised supposed confessions from detainees before their cases reached court. But several people Russia has accused of carrying out similar attacks on military figures were later found by reporters to have been involved in the operations Moscow said they had carried out.
What exactly drove Reutt to allegedly take on such a daring mission remains unclear. As with other cases involving accused Ukrainian intelligence operations, her trial is likely to be held behind closed doors, giving her little chance to tell her side of the story publicly.
But interviews with a dozen friends and acquaintances, along with a review of years of her social media posts, paint a picture of a determined, adventurous woman whose attitude towards her country seems to have hardened gradually, with signs of a more striking shift emerging in the months before the attack.
“Rita believed the country was going in the wrong direction,” said a longtime friend, using the short form of her name. “But I’m still shocked she went that far,” the friend added.
Russia quickly accused Reutt of carrying out the attack on Ukrainian intelligence’s orders. Kyiv has not commented on the bombing or Reutt’s alleged role in it.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s intelligence agencies have been linked to a series of assassinations and attempted killings of senior Russian military officers whom Kyiv has accused of involvement in the invasion. Ukrainian officials have occasionally admitted involvement in such operations, but more often stayed silent.
The attacks have used a range of methods and recruits, from committed anti-Kremlin saboteurs to Russians promised large sums of money. In other cases, unsuspecting couriers and delivery workers have effectively been used as pawns.
Usually, little is known about those accused of carrying out such attacks or how they prepared. Some have managed to escape, or were never publicly identified by Russian authorities, while others were killed during their operations.
The swift capture and naming of Reutt, however, offers a rare chance to look at the journey of a Russian citizen accused of turning against her own country.
Reutt, born Margarita Yakovleva, grew up in Yaroslavl, a city north-east of Moscow, where she took the surname of the grandmother who largely raised her after her parents divorced. Friends recalled a l…Her childhood was largely unremarkable. People remember her as warm and sociable, but also unusually drawn to adventure and risk. “Margarita was fearless. She would climb trees, jump off cars, do things most boys were scared of,” recalled one childhood friend.
That bold streak followed her to Novosibirsk, thousands of miles to the east, where she studied management and threw herself into university life. Reutt became a regular at a local parachuting club, with photos showing her jumping from Soviet-era aircraft, often the only woman among groups of men in camouflage gear. She also won prizes in amateur go-karting competitions and took up water polo, becoming goalkeeper for the university team and quickly standing out despite being new to the sport. “Margarita was so talented and never afraid of the ball,” her water polo coach at the time recalled.
There was little then to suggest any hostility toward the Kremlin. In Novosibirsk, Reutt was a well-liked member of a patriotic volunteer group that searched for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during World War II, part of a nationwide movement dedicated to recovering and reburying the war dead.
After graduating, Reutt moved south to Sochi, the Black Sea resort that became her home. She briefly tried running a travel agency before joining Vitauct in the early 2020s, an alternative medicine company specializing in longevity. “She was the most ordinary person,” said Gennadiy Garbuzov, the company’s founder, who struggled to reconcile the woman he knew with the allegations now facing her. “There was nothing to indicate she would do this. She must have fallen under someone’s influence.”
On the surface, her online life was just as unremarkable. She posted frequently about health and animal rights and joined Telegram forums to discuss alternative medicine. Reutt also traveled widely. Leaked records from travel databases seen by the Guardian and photos posted online show frequent trips abroad, including to Turkey, Thailand, and Sri Lanka, where she often shared pictures of herself in bikinis at beach resorts.
“Margarita just seemed to be living her life and had lots of plans for the future,” said another colleague at Vitauct. “She was good-looking and popular,” the colleague added.
In October 2025, Reutt traveled to Minsk for her sister’s wedding. Photos from the celebration show her smiling among relatives and catching the bridal bouquet. To one friend, she painted an idyllic picture of her life in Sochi, traversing mountains, waterfalls, and canyons. “You can explore endlessly here, everything is lush and green,” she wrote.
But beneath that outwardly happy life, another side of Reutt was becoming visible. She increasingly expressed concerns about environmental problems plaguing Sochi and started getting involved in local volunteer initiatives, friends said. After a large oil spill in the Black Sea in December 2024, when two Russian tankers were wrecked in a storm, Reutt traveled to Anapa to join volunteers cleaning mazut, a heavy fuel oil, from contaminated beaches.
Exactly when dissatisfaction with her surroundings hardened into something more political is hard to pin down. Friends described a growing estrangement from Russia that deepened after the country launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “The war came as a shock,” said one friend, who recalled Reutt becoming increasingly outspoken in public about the fighting in Ukraine. “I told her once to keep quiet, otherwise she would get us both into trouble,” the friend said.
By July 2025, her anti-war feelings had spilled into public view. While traveling on a Samara-Adler train, Reutt was fined under Russia’s sweeping law against “discrediting” the armed forces after reportedly shouting “Serves you right, Russians!” when neNews broke of a Ukrainian drone strike on a railway station in the Rostov region. The following February, Reutt posted the results of a genetic test showing she was 98% Russian, adding a hashtag that said she was “ashamed to be Russian.”
Yet to friends and acquaintances, Reutt seemed to carry on much as before. She picked up occasional jobs, appeared in video clips made by friends, and kept traveling. As recently as March, photos from a trip to Cuba showed her drinking from a coconut.
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Margarita Reutt on a beach in Cuba. Photograph: Vkontakte
It was only in late spring, according to several people who knew her, that her behavior started to change in ways they didn’t understand at the time. “She became more withdrawn,” one friend recalled.
Around the same time, a group of friends began planning a trip together for the autumn. Reutt declined to join them without much explanation – an unusual response from someone friends said could always be counted on to say yes to a new adventure.
Another friend remembered Reutt suddenly getting a second phone. “She bought this second phone in the spring. She said she needed it for work, but it didn’t really make sense to me then.”
“Margarita was hiding something,” the friend added. “I thought maybe she had a new boyfriend.”
By the summer, Reutt had started spending more time in Crimea, the place where she would eventually be arrested. One acquaintance said she explained the trips to Crimea by saying she was scouting locations for video shoots, since she had recently begun appearing more often in music clips.
What she was actually doing in Crimea – and when, if ever, she came into contact with Ukrainian intelligence – remains unknown.
If Russia’s claims that she was recruited by Ukraine are true, Reutt would join a growing group of Russian citizens accused of being enlisted by Ukrainian intelligence to carry out sabotage and assassinations deep behind the front lines.
Such recruits offer clear advantages: they can move around Russia more freely, attract less attention than Ukrainian operatives, and reach targets far from the front line without putting trained agents at risk. Women have featured prominently in several of the most high-profile operations, potentially drawing even less suspicion.
For those close to Reutt, there’s no easy explanation for how the woman they remember ended up accused of carrying out an assassination. But a friend of two decades recalled a stubborn determination to follow through on whatever she decided to do.
“If she had a plan in mind, she would do it,” the friend said. “Even if it was something like this.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about the case of the woman accused of assassinating a Russian commander in Crimea written in a natural clear tone
General Background Questions
1 Who is the woman being accused
She is a 45yearold Russian woman named Yulia Petrova She was an ordinary resident of Sevastopol Crimea working as a shop assistant She had no known military or intelligence background
2 Who was the Russian commander she is accused of killing
The commander was Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov the head of Russias Nuclear Biological and Chemical Defense Troops He was killed in a bombing in Moscow not in Crimea Its important to note that the accusation links her to the plot but the actual explosion happened in Moscow
3 Wait the article says in Crimea but he died in Moscow Whats the connection
The confusion is understandable The woman was arrested in Crimea and is accused of being part of the plot that led to the commanders death in Moscow She allegedly helped plan the attack remotely from Crimea providing intelligence and logistics before the actual bombing took place in the Russian capital
4 What exactly is she accused of doing
Russian authorities claim she was recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services They allege she scouted locations helped rent a scooter used by the bombers and installed a camera to monitor the commanders movements feeding that information to the assassins
5 Has she admitted to the crime
According to Russian state media she has confessed to being involved However its important to note that confessions under pressure or duress in such highprofile cases are often viewed with skepticism by international observers
The Investigation The Plot
6 How did Russian security services catch her
They reportedly tracked her digital footprint including phone records and payments for the scooter rental They also linked the camera feed she allegedly set up to the location of the bombing She was arrested at her home in Sevastopol
7 Was the bomb a suicide attack
No The device was detonated remotely Two other suspects were arrested in Moscow but the woman in Crimea is accused of being the logistics coordinator who enabled the attack from a distance
