"Macedonian-style," Mafia

Orekhovskaya, which rose to prominence for racketeering in the early 1990s, is thought to have organized the slayings of at least 35 people, including an investigator, a senior police official and many rival gangsters. The group's influence all but vanished after a series of arrests in the late 1990s. Pylev, the convicted leader, headed a brigade of hit men inside the group known as the Medvedkovskiye, Andrei Khryapov, a senior detective in the city police's criminal investigations department, told Gazeta.ru.
The brigade took care of the dirty work for the group's leaders, taking out rival crime bosses and businessmen who declined to "cooperate," Khryapov said.
With most of the group's founders having been killed by 1997, Pylev and his brother Andrei, along with Sergei Butorin, took over the group, Izvestia reported. Butorin is serving an eight-year prison term in Spain.
Spanish police arrested Andrei "The Dwarf" Pylev at his luxurious villa in the elite resort of Marbella in August 2003. Investigators say he oversaw a chunk of the group's finances. Oleg Pylev was extradited from Ukraine in 2003.
The slaying of Solonik was perhaps the group's most high-profile crime.
Solonik, a former soldier and police officer nicknamed Sasha Makedonsky for his deftness at simultaneously firing pistols in both hands "Macedonian-style," fled to Greece after escaping from Matrosskaya Tishina prison in 1995. His body was found on Feb. 2, 1997, near Athens. He had been strangled and wrapped in plastic bags.
Three months later, a suitcase, bag and towel containing the dismembered body of model Svetlana Kotova were found near Solonik's villa. Kotova and Solonik were romantically linked, media reported. Until last week's verdict, Pustovalov had been the only person convicted in connection with Solonik's