After an office shootout, the husband of Russia’s richest woman was arrested on murder charges

The ex-husband of Russia’s richest woman, Vladislav Bakalchuk, was caught and charged with murder on Thursday, his lawyers said. This came after a shooting at the Moscow office of Russia’s biggest online store, which killed one person.

Two people were shot and killed at the Wildberries office on Wednesday, just a few blocks from the Kremlin. The shooting happened because of a fight over the future of the company. Seven more people, including police officers, were hurt.

Vladislav and Tatyana Bakalchuk, his wife, filed for divorce in July. They have been in a public and heated fight since June, when Wildberries announced plans to merge with Russ Group, an outdoor advertising company.

Tatyana started Wildberries, which is like Amazon in Russia, in 2004. She turned it from an online clothing store into a big market for all sorts of things.

Both sides said the other was to blame for the shooting on Wednesday.

It was staff at the office who fired the first shots, Vladislav said. He had come for a meeting that had already been set up. Tatyana said that Vladislav and his coworkers had tried to take over the office, and that there was no meeting planned.

Lawyers for Vladislav said that he had been taken and charged with murder and attempted murder of a police officer. They called this a “blatant and unprecedented violation” of their client’s rights.

The business dispute is mostly about the merger that made RVB, a new company with Robert Mirzoyan as CEO. Tatyana’s overall stake in RVB dropped from 99% in Wildberries to about 65% in RVB.

At the time, Vladislav said that his wife was being used. Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya who stepped in to help Vladislav, called the marriage a “asset grab.”

Tatyana has said that both of those claims are false. The Kremlin said that President Vladimir Putin agreed with the merger and would not stop it from moving forward.

Tatyana asked Vladimir, “What are you doing?,” in a tearful video message that she sent on Telegram early Thursday morning. How are you going to look your parents and our kids in the eyes? What could you do to make things so ridiculous?”

It reminds me of the 1990s, when business turf wars were common and often deadly. This was because large amounts of property were being redistributed after the fall of the Soviet Union.