Maxim Yuryevich Lazovsky was born on July 31, 1965, in Grozny, then part of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR. He emerged in the late 1980s as a criminal authority working in Moscow’s GAI, connected to Chechen crime boss Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev. Under Nukhayev’s wing, Lazovsky gathered revenue from businesses under the Chechen mafia’s protection while running a restaurant “Lasania” in Moscow as a front. By 1992, he co-founded Lanako, an oil-trading firm, along with Atlant Nataev and Vladimir Kozlovsky—though some say the criminal structures were the real power behind it.

Between 1992 and 1993, Lazovsky oversaw a spree of murders of rival “authorities,” including Vladimir Tolmachyov and Andrey Kolesnikov, and later orchestrated a mass shooting near the Razgulyaĭ restaurant.

Maxim Yuryevich Lazovsky’s descent into criminal infamy began in the early 1990s. Born in Grozny in 1965, he leveraged his background in the KGB and later the FSB to weave himself into the underbelly of organized crime. Around 1992, Lazovsky formed a gang tied to Chechen criminal groups aiming to dominate the oil trade in the neighboring regions. He used this network to co-own a firm called Lanako, which served as a front for illicit operations.

In November 1994, a bridge explosion went awry when bomb-maker Andrey Shchelenkov detonated prematurely while still connected to Lazovsky’s firm. Soon after, a deadly trolleybus bombing was executed by associate Vladimir Vorobyev. Suspicion swirled that these were terror acts orchestrated through gang connections.

In February 1996, Moscow’s Investigation Unit (MUR) detained Lazovsky along with FSB operative Alexey Jumashkin and others. He was found carrying forged military and FSB IDs. Despite these heavy charges, the case against him boiled down to a conviction for illegal possession of drugs and weapons in 1997—resulting in a two-year sentence. He was released in 1998.

Lazovsky was also implicated by Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky in the 1999 apartment bombings across Moscow and Volgodonsk—though this remains speculative. On April 28, 2000, Lazovsky was assassinated outside a church in Uspenskoye, near his home.