Investigators said Thursday that four suspects, including two brothers, have been detained in connection with the butchering of 12 people in the Krasnodar region's Kushchyovskaya village last week.
The suspects, Kushchyovskaya residents who are believed to belong to a criminal gang in the neighboring Rostov region, are brothers Alexei, 24, and Yevgeny Gurov, 20, as well as Igor Maidanyuk, 16, and Vyacheslav Skachedub, 17, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
The four acted “aggressively” as they were detained but failed to put up serious resistance because of the well-prepared actions of the police, the statement said.
Investigators have found evidence possibly confirming the suspects' involvement in the killings, committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Interfax, without elaborating. Illegal drugs were also found in the suspects' homes, he said.
Two suspects previously served time in prison for unspecified felonies, a law enforcement official told Interfax.
The family of local farmer Serever Ametov was killed in their own home last Friday along with two neighbors and the family of a Rostov-on-Don entrepreneur, Vladimir Mironenko. Assailants stabbed most of them to death and then tried to torch the house.
If charged and convicted of multiple murders, the suspects face life in prison.
Krasnodar Governor Alexander Tkachyov has offered 1 million rubles ($32,000) for information leading to the killers. It is unclear whether anyone has claimed the reward.