Former fighter with Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine detained on suspicion of killing two Moscow women

A 47-year-old Georgian-born man who fought alongside Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine and later worked for a Kremlin-run media group has been detained on suspicion of murdering a Moscow woman and her 19-year-old daughter, the independent outlet Mediazona reported on Sunday.

Police arrested Teimuraz Gogiashvili in Russia's Voronezh region. The state news agency TASS said he confessed to both killings. The victims are Elena Tsereteli, the ex-wife of prominent Moscow restaurateur Mamuka Tsereteli, and her daughter Daria.

Investigators found Elena's dismembered remains on Saturday in an apartment in Moscow's Vykhino-Zhulebino district. The next day, they found Daria's remains in a garage in the town of Shcherbinka. Searches also turned up a stash of weapons and ammunition.

The tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets, citing unnamed sources, reported that Gogiashvili picked up 19-year-old Daria after a workout, drove her to a garage to collect some belongings, and shot her. Elena was killed the same way, the paper said: shot, then dismembered. It named financial disagreements as a possible motive.

Pro-Kremlin media have referred to Gogiashvili a "businessman" and a "fitness trainer”. Moskovsky Komsomolets said he ran a car-parts business in Moscow.

Independent outlets IStories and Astra reported that Gogiashvili fought in eastern Ukraine from 2014 with the pro-Russian Sparta battalion. Its commander, Arsen Pavlov, better known as "Motorola," was killed in a 2016 bombing in Donetsk. Gogiashvili was granted Russian citizenship through an expedited process in 2021.

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Gogiashvili serviced cars for Russian war correspondents. One of them, the prominent pro-war journalist Aleksandr Kots, named Gogiashvili among his travel companions and wrote that he had fought in the battle for Donetsk airport in 2014.

Gogiashvili also worked for the state-owned media group Rossiya Segodnya from 2019 to 2021, handling its warehouse and repairs. Moscow city records listed him as an employee as late as 2023.