Sentence for guides of tragic Elbrus ascent reduced

The victims' side insisted on tougher punishment, but each of the two guides had their prison terms reduced by six months.

As "Kavkazsky Uzel" wrote, we note that earlier two guides - Anton Nikiforov and Ilya Chuikov - were sentenced to three years and six months and three years and two months in a general regime penal colony, respectively. The organizer of the ascent, Denis Alimov, received five years and seven months in prison.

Ilya Chuikov and Anton Nikiforov, the guides who accompanied the tourists to Elbrus, had their prison terms reduced. This decision was made by the Supreme Court of Kabardino-Balkaria following an appeal filed against the verdict of the Elbrus District Court, issued in February 2025.

“The verdict of the Elbrus District Court is to be changed. To reduce the sentence of Anton Nikiforov to three years in prison, Ilya Chuikov to two years and eight months in prison, and otherwise leave the court’s verdict unchanged,” Interfax quotes presiding judge Khalimat Sabanchieva as saying.

The organizer of the ascent, Denis Alimov, was released due to the end of the term assigned to him by the court. It should be noted that Alimov said that he does not admit guilt. “I ask that the verdict be overturned, I do not plead guilty on any point and will not admit or confess to anything that I did not actually do,” TASS quoted his final statement during the trial in the court of first instance.

According to the investigation, Alimov knew that some of the guides he hired did not meet the qualification requirements, and it was also not taken into account that in September the weather conditions were unfavorable for passing the route to the western summit of Elbrus from the south. In addition, the organizers did not assess the level of training, equipment and health of the group members. After the weather worsened, the guides were unable to bring the entire group down to the starting point on their own and organize the evacuation in a timely manner.

The victims' side insisted on tougher punishment, as well as on collecting additional compensation from the convicts for moral damages and travel expenses that the victims incurred to participate in the trial. The state prosecutors also asked for tougher sentences, insisting that the guides and the organizer of the ascent did not ensure the tourists' safe ascent.

"The convicts did not simply show negligence, they systematically and deliberately violated safety rules for being in the mountains, and there is not a single mitigating circumstance: they did not repent, did not admit their guilt. My wife's parents still have not erected a monument to her, because they cannot believe what happened, she was their only child," said Artem Nesterov, the husband of Elena Nesterova, who died during the ascent. He and his wife were climbing Elbrus that day and were nearby at the time of her death.

A source in the law enforcement agencies of Kabardino-Balkaria told RIA Novosti that there were two other guides involved in the case, but one of them, under a written undertaking not to leave, hid from the investigation, and the other signed a contract to participate in a special military operation.

Recall that the incident on Elbrus caused a wide public outcry. The cause of the tragedy is the lack of proper control over commercial firms that send tourists to the mountains, suggested the head of the Kabardino-Balkaria Mountaineering Federation, Abdul-Khalim Olmezov. Local historian Viktor Kotlyarov expressed a similar opinion. He proposed introducing mandatory certification of companies and guides, as well as examination confirmation of tourists' mountaineering skills.

Elbrus is a two-peaked cone of an extinct volcano, the height of both peaks exceeds 5.6 kilometers. Elbrus attracts climbers and skiers from all over the world, according to the "Caucasian Knot" reference "Elbrus — the Patriarch of the Caucasus Mountains".