Original subtitles

Mafia.

You hear that word and you think you know what it means.

But behind that word lie empires of crime

with their own laws, their own rituals, their own code.

My name is Max Serio,

Italian filmmaker. I've been obsessed with organised crime

my whole life, and I got this deep feeling

that at the top of every country, every system,

there's always a mafia mentality.

I decided to go meet the people who live in these organisations

from inside, to understand how they manage to stay on top for so long.

A camera, an address book,

and I'll take you in the most dangerous criminal organisations

in the world...

... the Chinese Triads,

the Japanese Yakuza,

the fearsome 'Ndrangheta in Calabria,

and the Vory, the Russian mafia.

I will show you the rules and rituals they have in common,

and those that make them unique.

No lies. No bullshit.

We're not just talking about crime.

We're talking about power, respect,

loyalty, sealed in blood and held together by fear.

This is mafia.

♪ THE FLIGHT: 'The Stranger And His Wife'

...of the powerful reputation of the Russian mafia.

...a growing threat to our security: international organised crime.

They call them Vory v Zakone, Thieves-In-Law:

their law, their code, prison, tattoos, violence.

This is their world.

Today, they continue to cast a dark shadow over Russia

and Ukraine, making money from people's pain,

from the war.

Putin has very likely emptied the prisons,

Vory sent straight to the front in the war in Ukraine.

Survive, and your sentence is wiped out.

Don't come back? The problem is already solved.

A clean way to throw out the trash.

They do business with anyone

and eliminate anyone who gets in their way.

I released a guy. He's leaving the detention centre,

and he says, I'm going to the maternity ward

to pick up my wife and baby. Just basically,

two accomplices were already waiting for him there.

I knew they got him in the car,

drove off, and stopped near a hardware store. And they say,

sorry, Vasya, I need to buy some screwdrivers.

They stabbed him to death with those screwdrivers.

Every criminal in the former Soviet Union

has to pay their dues to the thieves or risk paying the ultimate price.

Their numbers may have fallen in recent years,

but in the Russian criminal underworld,

nothing moves without them.

Life and death, everything goes through the Vory.

Late '80s, the Soviet system is cracking.

Everything is about to explode.

Outside, fear, hunger, misery, riots.

But in the prison, it's the gulag.

Life goes on as if nothing has changed.

That system holds up because it's built on one thing,

the Vory code.

It all starts in prison.

Criminals don't want to end up behind bars, right? Wrong.

The Vory v Zakone are born here. This is their home,

their training ground.

You want respect? You want to be somebody?

First of all, prison.

There are only walls, four mattresses, and us.

Just imagine for a second,

who in this group is going to get sick of whom first?

If you just got out of prison, I mean there was this phrase,

gangster romance. I mean, former convicts, everyone knew them.

If he got out, came back to the neighbourhood,

he was a big shot. Vasiliy, Vladimir, Mikhail.

Theft and prison.

Same story for everyone. They lived the code.

Years behind bars.

Prison is the foundation.

You survive, you're tough, you earn respect.

To understand the power of the Vory, I'm going to Moscow.

It's not easy these days in a time of conflict,

but it's the only way to uncover the legendary Russian mafia

Moscow is exactly the grey I expected.

Low skies crushing the grey stone. A city that still moves

as if holding its breath.

I see it in the luxury buildings above peeling facades

that no-one has re-done for 50 years.

In the black cars parked, engines running,

in front of restaurants, waiting for big, nameless players

to come out. It's imperial Russia again.

The power of one man. Every rouble, every deal,

everything goes through him.

And for him, as for his historical predecessors,

thieves, gangs, and killers have their uses.

At the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917,

something new happens in the prisons and gulags.

Like the new Soviets and workers' councils

outside the walls, the prisoners also organise.

Not gangs, but guilds with their own rules.

They remain outcasts of society. But inside the prison, they rule.

They are the tsars.

And behind those walls and prison perimeters,

a criminal code is born

that will outlive the regime that created it.

In the 1930s.

Inside Stalin's gulags, that brotherhood takes a name:

Vory v Zakone, Thieves-in-Law.

World War II puts it to the test.

Many accept Stalin's amnesty to fight in the Red Army,

and pay for it with blood upon their return.

But the Vory code always survives.

Stalin dies in March 1953.

The gulags empty out.

The Vory fill the cracks of the Soviet system,

managing the black market that the state can no longer control.

In the '80s, the entire Soviet system begins to crack.

And after the fall of the Wall in 1989,

they are the ones keeping everything standing.

Once again, they revive the black economy

to keep a politically on-its-knees country afloat.

Cybercrime, financial fraud, drugs, human trafficking,

everything, basically.

In recent years, their numbers have shrunk,

but they remain a presence wherever it really matters.

And there is a hardcore of bosses who remain the force

behind every major activity in the Russian criminal underworld.

That's why I'm here in Moscow,

to understand how they became so influential,

and to find the code written on their skin.

During the Soviet era,

commercial initiative was limited. Many wanted out. In the '80s.

when the regime loosens its grip with glasnost and perestroika,

many flee, chasing Western dreams.

Those who stay are hungry.

It's not the Russian mafia yet,

just hungry people carving up territory.

Every story starts in the same place, the street.

Petty crimes, but in your head, you're already a boss.

Mikhail dreamed of it since he was a kid,

and when his chance comes, he takes it.

In the' 90s, 50 men under his command. Former athletes,

Afghanistan veterans. Their business: pure and simple, extortion.

In my time, I spent over nine years in prison

and took an active part

in the informal movements of the '90s.

A more or less conscious age.

Watching movies, I always rooted for the spies and criminals.

I wanted to have those famous jeans, which, by the way,

cost 200 roubles back then,

while the average salary of an office worker or labourer

was like 180.

So around 16, I wrote these lines.

I wanted to wear a sheepskin coat with jeans

and to show off with a light brown beard

and plunge into a bath of champagne. And my head

covered in a muskrat fur hat.

At the time, Mikail had nothing but dreams.

Visions of wealth seen in Western movies

that he was determined to make a reality for himself

and his poor family.

There was only one way to do it.

When we committed our first burglary,

my partner was the one who opened the doors.

He handled the technical side.

so he naturally went in first. But I, just for a few seconds,

I froze. I knew that if I crossed that threshold

now, there would be no turning back.

Petty crimes, pocket change.

But you already feel like a Vor,

a Thief-In-Law.

My name is Vladimir.

In the criminal world, the underworld,

they know me as Vova Lavovsky.

In the seventh grade, I think, just a kid,

it was a Sunday. Strange, the shop was closed,

and there was a black Volga car.

We got curious. We went over,

the car turned out to be unlocked.

We opened it, and there was a pouch full of money.

I immediately bought myself a bunch of watches for both arms,

just like that. And right away, the first thing was easy money.

You know, easy money, when everyone loves you,

respect from all sides, attention, and all that.

Of course, that served as a reason to keep committing crimes.

And with crimes inevitably comes a conviction or two.

And with prison comes the mark of the Vory,

applied to the skin as an indelible sign of belonging.

The domes represent the years, years in prison terms,

how many times a person was locked up and for how long.

My name is Vasily. I served more than 16 years in prison.

In criminal circles, bragging isn't done.

Other people speak for us. Our actions speak for us,

for our way of life.

And all those actions, those crimes, are clearly documented

on a Vor's body. Every tattoo tells a story, your story.

Where you've been, what you've done,

who you really are.

I also have a cat with playing cards and dice.

Cards, you know, it's mostly about the game.

Every decent inmate has to play cards.

An inmate can't refuse to play.

In the criminal world,

the acronym KOT stands for 'native prison inhabitant.'

That's why you sometimes see cats in the cells, and in the camps,

there are so, so many of them.

The scorpion symbolises your ability to defend yourself and your friends.

If you have stars on both knees,

it means you won't kneel before anyone.

Stars can be here, too.

That means you'll never wear epaulets.

You won't join the military or the police.

Every mark tells a story:

a crime, a conviction, a rank.

It's a map of a life in crime.

In prison, you need to know who you're dealing with

the instant you look at someone. This is who I am.

These are my crimes.

After serving more than 16 years in prison

for offences ranging from petty theft

to conspiracy to commit murder, Vasily today

tries to live a better life, away from the life and rituals

of a Vor. He is in the perfect position to explain

how young drifters are seduced by the allure and respect of the Vor

and become radicalised in prison.

The spider is the stealer's symbol.

It's there to distinguish thieves from stealers.

If the spider is crawling upward, it means he has stolen

and will keep stealing. Wanted independence,

wanted to express myself somehow, I guess.

I felt like I wasn't like everyone else, and so I showed,

I guess, my dominance that way, maybe.

Well, we did extortion.

We met a kid just like us, and a patrolman saw us right away.

All these kids were detained,

taken to the Pechersky police station,

put in the precinct, and everyone was put in prison.

They gave us three years.

That's how I ended up in prison for the first time.

Why did all this happen? Because it was fashionable.

If you were a criminal, if you just got out of prison,

there was this phrase, gangster romance.

I mean, former convicts, everyone knew them.

If he got out, came back to the neighbourhood,

he was a big shot. I always paid, contributed,

kept in touch with people in prison.

I was smuggling drugs through a cop who worked there.

But then, one fine day,

that cop got arrested, and they traced it back to me,

of course. I was passing it, I passed it to him,

and: freeze, don't move. hey gave me eight years.

I thought everyone inside was an idiot,

and I was so smart they'd never catch me.

I was walking from my house to the nearest bus stop

to go to the university.

And right next to me,

just like in a movie, a black Volga screeched to a halt...

...threw me into this Volga,

and off I went for two and a half years.

The stories of Vasiliy, Mikhail, and Vladimir, lives so young

ruined by their own crimes, condemned to years behind bars,

touch me deeply. But what happens to these kids once they're inside?

What is their fate? How do they end up belonging to the Vory?

I started to go to the Soviet Union in the late '80s.

So I arrived as a young Italian in a quite unfamiliar place.

I realised that there was a fraternity,

and I got really fascinated by this criminal fraternity.

Federico Varese, a professor of criminology at Oxford,

has studied the rituals and roles of the Vory in their own territory.

The expression Vory v Zakone is complex.

The first part means 'thief,' which really means a criminal.

You are a criminal that follows a code of honour.

And the word 'zakon' in Russian, a criminal that follows the law,

actually refers to the code of honour.

Vory in particular are very devoted. They tend to be quite religious,

at least nominally.

And the tattoos they put on their bodies

to signal their progression in the criminal world

have religious images.

If you want to be a true Vor,

an authentic Vor, you have to have experienced prison.

You go into a cell, and there they are.

And you're in there with them. They see you're a decent guy.

They check you out, make sure you haven't done anything wrong.

They ask you, what's your deal?

That's just a prelude to questioning you,

questioning you based on your integrity

and your lifestyle.

To us, they're like older brothers.

We don't call them Thieves-In-Law. We call them older brothers. We obey,

we listen, and we do what they tell us,

because they only say what's right

and how things should be. They created their own system

within the system, which lives by its own canons,

its own principles, its own rules.

Here are the rules.

There are only walls, four mattresses, and us.

Just imagine for a second,

who in this group is going to get sick of whom first?

so that we're all comfortable, so that we understand

who is who and how everyone should behave,

because we have to live here for more than just one day.

There is the Thief-In-Law. There is his word.

Just like in a state, there's a president

and, figuratively speaking, ministers, people.

The hierarchy is truly a pyramid, a clear command structure

established in prison.

How do you rise through the ranks? Same as always. Do what you're told,

keep your mouth shut, make some money,

and above all, respect the code.

Prison is the proving ground,

the first test to see where you stand in the Vory brotherhood.

People with weak minds don't survive in prison.

Police, dogs, food.

This whole atmosphere around criminals,

it was all terrible.

But after two and a half months,

well, I actually loved it there. I realised it was my thing.

I got interested. I wanted to learn and experience everything,

all the security levels, all of it. You know,

to reach the top in this world.

I go outside, and there's this guy in glasses. I'm like,

what are you doing hanging around here? He says,

well, I just arrived. I asked, what's your charge?

He named some charge. I didn't even know that one.

I say, alright, I'm busy, and left.

When a crowd is beating someone, you can hear it from a mile away.

I rushed over there. I see someone getting beaten. I see the glasses.

Turns out he's a paedophile.

The story hits hard. Vladimir also told me this.

Some beatings aren't done with hands.

You don't touch these people with your hands,

and if they survive, they tattoo a pig on their skin forever.

So the norm is one body a month

... A record was set.

In one day, they stabbed 11 prisoners.

And when a prisoner is executed by the Vory,

his remains are publicly displayed as a warning to everyone else.

But if you keep your head down, stay respectful,

and prove you're tough, someone not to be messed with,

it's only a matter of time before you get noticed

by the right people.

If a person lives right,

if his actions are right, if the people around him

speak only highly of him, the elder brothers take notice of him

and gather and discuss it.

Like, hey, there's this guy. I see him among us.

Let's bring him in, because he's worthy.

He's been living there for more than a year,

not just a short time.

And if he is deemed worthy,

it's time to welcome him.

An initiation rite that neither he nor his prison brothers

will ever forget.

So how does the Vory initiation rite work?

Is there a ceremony like in all other mafias?

For the Vory, it happens through a skhodka,

a gathering of recognised brothers.

Only one item on the agenda: is the candidate worthy?

Between the '30s and '50s, there was also an oath to recite.

It went something like this: "I have set foot

on the path of the thief's life. I swear to be worthy

and never to fall into the enemy's trap."

A Vor swore total submission to the laws of criminal life.

The most important thing here is the paper.

I have something written about the person who was approached.

It starts off something like, peace, goodwill, and prosperity

to our home, basically.

May the holy thieves' way prosper and grow stronger.

Then the signatures of the thieves. The paper goes all over the prison,

all shout, "Life to the thieves!

The paper is called a Malyava. It goes from one prison to another,

so everyone everywhere knows who the new initiate is.

That's how the Vory communicate.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989...

...the Vory find new life. In the political and economic vacuum

that follows, they grow stronger, more powerful.

In the '90s, it's the black economy

that ironically keeps the country on its feet. And for a time at least,

that economy is in the grip of its most hardened criminals.

The emergence of new Russia was characterised by violence.

There was a lot of violence Related to the privatisation

of the jewels of the Soviet industry, which are very, very precious,

of course, and very valuable. The state was weak and ineffective

and incapable.

So crime was the shortcut. Everyone ended up in it:

professional criminals, former athletes, soldiers,

businessmen, former KGB agents.

The state itself was very unfair. On the one hand,

the state corruption,

and on the other hand, the criminal world.

In the '90s, the Russian mafia was extremely powerful.

President Yeltsin himself said that Russia is a criminal superpower.

New Russian crime syndicates are born,

spreading everywhere.

Europe, Canada, the UK, the US,

and all the former Soviet republics.

The Vory want their piece of the pie, too.

And under the new regime, they are now out.

When I got released, I came out as a vigorous, prepared,

and driven young man. It was hard for me to cross the street.

I had lost my sense of distance, and I was afraid of cars.

In the '90s, it was just a total shock for me.

Everything was crumbling before our eyes.

The cops didn't understand

why they had to protect and guard yesterday's speculators.

Just yesterday, they were arresting these people

for speculation, and now they are respectable members of society,

the hope of Russia's future. It was easier for them to talk to me

than to those businessmen.

I realised that this was my time.

I managed to put together a bit of a crew.

Mostly they were neighbourhood thugs.

We started shaking down the businessmen, and then

these traitors started coming to us, giving us money

so we wouldn't touch them or their relatives and friends.

The main businesses of Russian crime become extortion,

cigarette smuggling, racketeering,

alcohol, weapons, human trafficking,

prostitution, toxic waste, corruption, public procurement,

political influence, and of course,

drugs from supply routes across the Afghan border.

My workday started at 12. I'd leave for training by one,

gym from one to three, and after three,

meetings, if there were any serious sitdowns.

To understand what was really going on

behind the scenes during this period...

...I'm going to lawyer Valery Karyshev.

For over 30 years, he has defended hundreds of Vory.

Well, if we're talking about the Russian mafia,

I'd split it into two parts.

In this first category,

there's just this group of criminals that doesn't recognise any laws

or any code of criminal conduct. To them, Thieves-In-Law,

the Vory are nobodies. Right?

And then there's a category of people, a category of criminals,

who, on the contrary, respect the criminal world,

the criminal laws. In the thieves' code,

there are certain rules: like Thieves-In-Law must not kill,

they must recruit the younger generation,

and of course, the most important thing

is to maintain rules and order in prisons. That was their main role.

And they also acted as arbitrators

when there was some kind of misunderstanding

between criminal gangs, or as they say,

but actually it's just settling some grievances

against each other. It was the Thieves-In-Law

who would settle these grievances. I was at a sit-down once,

but I was there as, like, a lawyer for this businessman.

And so we waited. We sat down in a restaurant

in silence, waiting for the Thief-In-Law.

This nice, expensive, premium-plus car pulls up,

and out comes this guy in a suit and tie, the whole deal,

wearing nice shoes. He even took a handkerchief

and wiped some dirt off his shoe, which for some reason

really surprised me. Well, he sat down and started listening.

And the gang that was protecting my businessman, they told him,

they said, Dima, you shouldn't say a single word

until you're asked. And Dima sat there quietly,

keeping his mouth shut. And so they were resolving all the issues,

and the issue is being resolved in our favour. And then suddenly,

when everything was already finished, you know,

the Thief-In-Law had already stood up and was about to leave,

Dima said, he says, but you, he says, didn't take one nuance into account.

The Thief-In-Law goes, what? What nuance? he says.

Who is Nuance? he says. I don't know any Thief-In-Law

by the nickname Nuance.

And that essentially decided it.

So the dispute was not resolved in our favour.

The Vory are not famous for nuance.

Dima should have kept his mouth shut.

For the Vory, everything revolves around money and power.

And if they don't get what they want, the equation is simple: war.

From the late '90s to the late 2000s, extremely powerful figures

emerge at the head of immense criminal empires.

Ded Hassan, Yaponchik,

Tariel Oniani, Rovshan Janiyev.

Thief against thief, alliances, vendettas,

scores settled in the most brutal way imaginable.

I had this case once

when I released a guy. He's leaving the detention centre

and he says, I'm going to the maternity ward

to pick up my wife and baby.

Just basically, two accomplices were already waiting for him there.

Anyway, they got him in the car, drove off, and stopped

near a hardware store. And they say, sorry, Vasya,

I need to buy some screwdrivers. And they stabbed him to death

with those screwdrivers.

They thought he was a snitch.

So they were planning to liquidate me

on multiple occasions.

In that world, people got killed.

It's brutal, but people still respect the Vory.

They live by their own code, not the state's. They are in songs,

movies, culture. They aren't just criminals.

They are a myth.

It's all about money.

Any crime, the underlying motive is, first of all, money. Profit.

A long, silent, unstoppable river of money.

Colonel Dorin Tomsa of the Moldovan police explains it

to you. He spent years hunting post-Soviet organised crime.

For a thief, any financial support is important. I mean,

they don't turn their noses up at anything. So anything

that brings in a profit is within their sphere of interest.

Organised crime isn't static. They are evolving.

Nowadays, cybercrime is highly relevant.

They co-operate, yeah, with each other, like the Italians,

the Chinese, South Americans,

the cartels. They all co-operate with each other, right?

Because they have to legitimise their money somehow, you know,

launder it. The simplest way is carwashes,

or construction, for example. A house is built, the house is sold,

and there you go, you have clean money.

And most of them

have even turned from criminals into criminal businessmen.

December 31st, 1999, Yeltsin resigns.

Putin becomes acting President of Russia. With him,

the relationship between the state and organised crime

changes radically. Those who fall in line survive.

Those who stay independent are hit,

and the Vory are among the main targets.

They start off as being in opposition to the state,

and they see themself as an alternative form of governance.

And that is their ideology throughout.

With the current situation in Russia,

with the rise of authoritarian in society led by Putin,

the Vory have been under huge pressure. So Putin,

at some point, saw the Vory

as a dangerous alternative source of power and respect.

And so, paradoxically, they've been repressed and tortured

as much as dissidents and other opponents to the regime.

They're locking them up just for being thieves.

I read the verdicts, and it's like, kept in touch with the camps,

spread, you know, thieves' ideas, settled disputes.

But where's the actual crime? Where's the robbery, the theft,

the murder? There is none.

So either these people must exist, or they must go underground,

live under false names, or outside Russia's borders.

Toward the end of the 2000s...

...Yaponchik and Ded Hassan are taken out by a sniper.

Same fate, Dzhanyev,

riddled with bullets in Istanbul.

Oniani is extradited to Spain, and after serving his sentence,

he disappears. The remaining Vory bosses have fled,

scattered throughout the former Soviet Union.

More than half are Georgian, followed by Armenians, Kurds,

and Azerbaijanis. Only 40 remain in Russia.

Putin used the invasion of Ukraine as an opportunity to settle scores

with the Vory. Thousands of inmates recruited

directly from prison. Fight, and your sentence disappears.

If you survive, you're free. If not, the problem solves itself.

He focused on criminals because a guy who's in prison

with a long sentence basically has nothing to lose.

War is not a thief's thing at all. I mean,

war is just, like, not it at all. Like, you shouldn't go there.

It's none of your business. Either way,

you're going to fight for the government.

That's why many thieves who wrote those decrees suffered.

Some one way, some hanged.

Vasily is no longer in Russia. He's out, maybe for his family,

for his kids. At least that's what I like to believe.

But you never really leave that world.

And even if you try, the marks on your body always tell the truth.

Sure, I'd gladly do it all over again. I'm sorry.

I'd live exactly the same life. I'm satisfied with everything.

I wouldn't change a thing. Yes, everyone wants to live,

but it's like a conscious choice. When you commit a crime,

you don't know what's waiting for you behind that door.

Crime is all about the adrenaline first and foremost.

Well, I don't know. I never got that kind of high from anything else.

So I was an ideological drug addict.

Why did I agree to go on camera? If more people understand

what this criminal world is really like, they'll get it,

maybe fewer people will want it.

My dad was in the military, so he always dreamed of me

becoming a military pilot. I didn't manage it.

Death doesn't seem so scary anymore. A lot of inmates get slashed up,

slit their wrists, cut their stomachs,

or slit their throats. When you're a step closer to death,

you don't think about it as much. You live for this,

you live for crime, and there's no turning back.

Moscow. The Vory v Zakone.

I leave this place after meeting a criminal elite,

a mafia that has changed, evolved,

a mafia that is still feared everywhere.

You can leave, but the code doesn't leave you.

It stays in your blood, ink under the skin.

♪ My courage came to life

♪ There was a fire in my eyes

♪ And I swallowed up the darkness

♪ And held it deep inside

♪ When the devil came to take me

♪ Its howl cut through the night

♪ And I stood beneath its shadow

♪ Prepared to live or die

♪ In my dark despair

♪ Will I rise or fall?

♪ Will I see the sun rise again?

♪ Or sink into a cold and bitter end? ♪

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