Key witness against Putin-linked businessman Ilya Traber is ex-POW returned in prisoner swap

The criminal case against St. Petersburg businessman Ilya Traber, accused of involvement in a 2020 murder, relies heavily on testimony from Igor Lykov, a convicted criminal who fought in Ukraine, was captured, and returned to Russia in a prisoner exchange. Traber, who built his business empire during Vladimir Putin's time at St. Petersburg City Hall, was arrested on June 17, 2026 and remanded in custody. Russian investigative outlet Fontanka has reviewed the case materials and revealed the key details of how the prosecution was built.

The murder case against Ilya Traber, a St. Petersburg businessman long described as one of the few surviving criminal authorities whose acquaintance Vladimir Putin publicly acknowledged, rests on testimony from a man whose path to the witness stand ran through the trenches of Ukraine and a prisoner-of-war camp, Fontanka reported on Wednesday.

Witness with a criminal past

The key witness, Igor Lykov, is a 60-year-old native of Gudermes with multiple prior convictions. In December 2024, he was being held in a St. Petersburg detention facility on new criminal charges when he signed a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defence and left for the front. In February 2025, he was captured by Ukrainian forces.

After being returned to Russia in a prisoner exchange, Lykov was questioned in Moscow in February 2026 in connection with the 2020 murder of St. Petersburg entrepreneur and municipal deputy Alexander Petrov. According to Fontanka, the criminal case file against Traber references video footage of an interview Lykov gave to Ukrainian blogger Dmytro Karpenko while in captivity.

From prison yard to Traber's inner circle

In that interview, Lykov claimed he first met Traber's longtime business partner Vladimir Danilenko back in 1987 at a prison in Yaroslavl, where Danilenko was, in Lykov's words, a "block overseer." Lykov said he assaulted a prison operative at Danilenko's request. Nearly three decades later, in 2014, Danilenko reportedly contacted him online, invited him to Moscow, and introduced him to Traber as a close associate of Ilya Traber. Lykov says he subsequently became one of Traber's drivers, men who also served as couriers and handled «delicate assignments».

In his testimony, Lykov stated that Danilenko had asked him to kill Petrov, but that he refused. Danilenko then allegedly found two other men for the job, Sultan and Said, both from Dagestan. Lykov said he met the pair at Danilenko's request, drove them to a restaurant in St. Petersburg, and overheard Danilenko discuss their fee for the killing: 50 million rubles.

Arrests and accused

Traber's home was searched on June 17, 2026, and a Moscow court remanded him in pre-trial detention the same day. He is accused alongside Danilenko, who has also been arrested, of organising the murder of Petrov. Two other men, Sait Saladinov and Alisultan Nadirbegov, have been arrested as the alleged direct perpetrators of the killing.

Putin's St. Petersburg years

Traber's significance extends well beyond this single criminal case. He began his entrepreneurial career in the 1980s with an antiques business and by the 1990s had acquired control over the St. Petersburg seaport. He is also linked to the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal (PNT), the largest oil products transhipment terminal in the Baltic region.

His connections to Putin date from the period when the future Russian president worked in St. Petersburg's city administration. In a 2017 investigation, the television channel Dozhd described Traber as «the only surviving criminal authority whose acquaintance Putin acknowledged», a characterisation that has followed him ever since and that now casts a long shadow over this murder prosecution.