Escort Lady Admits to Assassinating Russian Commander
Margarita Reut (32) was arrested in Sevastopol after a bomb in a trash can killed Robert Shageyev, a Black Sea Fleet officer wanted by Kyiv for high treason.
Margarita Reut (32) was arrested in Sevastopol after a bomb in a trash can killed Robert Shageyev, a Black Sea Fleet officer wanted by Kyiv for high treason.
Russian escort lady Margarita Reut (32) has been arrested in Sevastopol, Crimea, on charges of assassinating a high-ranking officer of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Robert Shageyev (49). According to the New York Post, as reported by Kurir.rs, Shageyev was killed last Thursday when a bomb hidden in a trash can exploded as he was descending stairs beside it.
Reut has pleaded guilty and has been detained on charges of "terrorism resulting in death." Russian media report that when asked if she regretted the killing, she coldly replied "no" and that she had planned to flee the country after the assassination. If convicted, she faces up to 30 years in prison.
Born in Yaroslavl, a city about 260 kilometers northeast of Moscow, she previously lived in Sochi on the Black Sea coast and frequently visited Crimea. In addition to working as an escort, she allegedly also worked as a biologist producing flower-scented vaginal suppositories.
It is unclear when and how she became an agent of the Ukrainian intelligence service. In July 2025, she was already arrested for shouting on a train after news of a Ukrainian drone attack on a railway station in the Rostov region. Kurir.rs reports that she shouted "Russians, you needed this!" while Jutarnji list cites the quote "Russians, you deserve it!"
Robert Shageyev graduated in 1999 from the Sevastopol Naval Institute named after P.S. Nakhimov. On August 12, 2011, he took command of the Ukrainian submarine U-01 "Zaporizhzhia," the only submarine of the Kyiv navy. In July 2013, he was promoted to the rank of Captain First Rank.
During the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the submarine was blocked in Streletskaya Bay. Shageyev then claimed that his unit would hold out to the very end, but on March 21, 2014, the crew left the ship on his orders. A Russian tugboat towed the submarine to Yuzhnaya Bay, where the Ukrainian flag was replaced with the Russian one. Shageyev defected to the Russian Navy and received more than 50,000 hryvnias in financial aid. In Ukraine, he was subsequently put on the wanted list for desertion.
After retraining in St. Petersburg, by the end of 2015 he became the commander of one of two submarine divisions based in Sevastopol. In March 2016, he attended the ceremonial launch of the submarine "Veliky Novgorod," and that same year he also welcomed the submarine B-261 "Novorossiysk." In March 2017, he participated in anti-submarine exercises commanding the submarine B-262 "Stary Oskol." Since 2018, he was the deputy commander of the 4th Separate Submarine Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet.
According to sources cited by Kurir.rs, the explosion was carried out on the orders of Kyiv, suggesting a possible Ukrainian operation in Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
