The 'ordinary' Sochi woman accused of killing a Russian commander in Crimea
A bomb hidden in a bin killed a deputy Russian Black Sea fleet submarine brigade commander in Sevastopol on 13 August, and within hours police detained 32-year-old Margarita Reutt, accused of carrying out the attack for Ukrainian intelligence.
Just after dawn on 13 August, a powerful explosion ripped through a residential square in Sevastopol, the Russian-occupied Crimean port city. A bomb hidden inside a rubbish bin, containing roughly 500g of TNT equivalent, detonated as Robert Shageev, deputy commander of a Russian Black Sea fleet submarine brigade, walked past in naval uniform. He died at the scene.
Within hours, police detained a suspect: Margarita Reutt, 32, a resident of the Russian resort city of Sochi. During a search, investigators said they found a remote control believed to have been used to trigger the bomb. According to Russia's FSB security service, Reutt confessed and said a handler linked to Ukrainian intelligence had promised her a substantial cryptocurrency payment and documents allowing her to leave Russia. These claims have not been independently verified.
From parachuting to a bombing accusation
Shageev had once commanded Ukraine's only submarine before switching allegiance to Russia when Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014. Reutt, born Margarita Yakovleva, grew up in Yaroslavl and later studied in Novosibirsk, where she took up parachuting, go-karting and water polo. She eventually settled in Sochi, working for an alternative medicine company and travelling frequently abroad.
Acquaintances describe her as sociable and adventurous, though her attitude toward Russia appears to have hardened over the past year. In July 2025 she was fined under Russia's law against "discrediting" the armed forces after reacting publicly to a Ukrainian drone strike, and by the following February she had posted online that she was "ashamed to be Russian."
By this spring, friends noticed changes: she grew more withdrawn, acquired a second phone, and began spending more time in Crimea, which she explained as scouting locations for video shoots. What she was actually doing there, and whether she had contact with Ukrainian intelligence, remains unclear. Kyiv has not commented on the bombing or her alleged involvement. Ukrainian intelligence services have been linked to a series of assassinations and attempted killings of senior Russian military figures since the start of the full-scale invasion.
