Translated material
"The cats saw everything"
On January 30, 19-year-old Victor Bugun visited his 18-year-old ex-girlfriend Olesya Ibragimova in an apartment in Moscow, where she lived with 10 cats. According to him, he wanted to take his things and try to improve relations. However, the mother of the deceased does not believe in this version: her daughter previously complained that she was afraid of Bugun. When the former partners met, the conversation between them quickly escalated into a quarrel, during which Bugun knocked Ibragimova to the floor and strangled her. "Cold" gives details.
Her ex-partner brutally murdered her pet cat in front of the animals she was looking after 
For a long time, Ibragimova read the telegram channel of the charity foundation “Piece of Happiness” - it helped homeless animals and those who suffered from human cruelty. “I followed the stories of cats. <…> I felt sorry for the cats <…>. I wanted to help them, to help the foundation,” Ibragimova said in one of the organization’s videos. One day she saw that the foundation was looking for a cat nurse and decided to apply. She went for an interview and eventually got a job there.
In May 2025, Ibragimova moved into an apartment on Sovkhoznaya Street in Moscow with her new charges. The fund rented the property and used it as a shelter. She said that she paid attention to each cat, played with everyone and even slept with them. According to Ibragimova, the routine of caring for the animals took a lot of time. “It takes time to cut the meat, wash the bowls, remove all the trays, and sometimes completely change them, add new filling,” Ibragimova listed .
She did not consider her job difficult, although sometimes, she said, there were difficult days. “Sometimes you need to urgently take cats to the clinic. Here you forget about all your affairs, you may not eat, you can return home at one or two in the morning,” she described .
This was Ibragimova’s first work, but she liked it so much that she called it “the best in her life.” “She gives emotions first of all. These are experiences, this is joy for little children,” that’s what she called the cats.
The foundation was also pleased with her and believed that she was in the right place. As they wrote in the “Piece of Happiness” telegram channel, Ibragimova quickly became an assistant to management, “senior nanny” and “curator of new arrivals.” “[She] loved cats and understood them on an intuitive level,” the channel wrote.
The fund's donors also spoke well of her; many wrote that she was “a ray of goodness and light.” “Outwardly a gentle, thin girl, but obviously with a strong core inside, since she was able to devote herself to caring for our weakest and most vulnerable little brothers,” said one of the subscribers of the foundation’s Telegram channel.
"Drinking Slacker"
For some time, 19-year-old Victor Bugun, with whom Ibragimova had been dating for about four years, lived in the apartment with Ibragimova and her ward cats. They studied in the same class and knew each other's families. Olesya’s mother Olga Ibragimova calmly let her daughter go to Victor’s parents.
“He often came to our dacha. It was impossible to imagine that he would do this. At first he seemed like a completely normal, adequate young man,” Olga Ibragimova told reporters.
However, over the past six months, as the mother of the murdered woman said , Bugun has changed a lot. After school he did not go to study or work. “She ran to help me, returned home, and he, excuse me, was lying on the sofa, catching flies,” said Ibragimova.
Mutual acquaintances of the couple, quoted by NTV, said that Bugun was a “drinking slacker and a narcissistic egoist.” He spent a lot of time on the computer playing video games and lived off Ibragimova's money, they said. NTV also showed a video where Olesya complained about Bugun.
“He sits, drinks, talks with his beloved Vitya, thinks only about himself,” Ibragimova says in this video.
Olesya’s friend Alexandra Baranova added that Bugun lost his temper, shouted at his girlfriend, and even went so far as to “swing his arms, allegedly threatening.” “He said a lot of nasty things, abnormal things. In general, I began to treat her more consumeristly, more like a sponsor,” said Baranova.
In a conversation with journalists, Olesya’s mother recalled that about a week before her death, Olesya decided to break up with Bugun and asked him to move out of the apartment. However, he allegedly offered to remain friends and asked “to come at least once a week and look at the cats.”
"It's hell out there now"
On the afternoon of January 30, Olesya helped her mother Olga, who also worked at the “Piece of Happiness” foundation, move into the so-called “kotodom” - housing that the foundation provides to nannies to care for cats. After this, Olesya returned to her place. Her ex-partner was supposed to arrive around 5:00 p.m. Olesya called her mother and complained that she was afraid of him.
“He said he was on his way. I’m afraid, I won’t let him into the apartment,” she told her mother. She suggested that she not open the door and pretend that no one was home. However, according to the telegram channel Baza , Olesya Ibragimova was worried that Bugun would make a scandal in front of the door and scare the cats. According to the Piece of Good Foundation, Bugun had a duplicate key, so he opened the door himself. After this conversation with her mother, Ibragimova no longer contacted her.
According to a representative of the foundation, Olga Ibragimova said that she had a bad feeling, so she asked another employee of the foundation to go to her daughter. According to the charity organization A Piece of Happiness, this colleague went there early in the morning of January 31 and already found the police there. Neighbors told reporters that the day before they heard a strong roar in the apartment. Olesya’s mother Olga is sure that Bugun specifically went to Olesya that day to kill her.
“He did it consciously, he prepared for it. It was not spontaneous or in a state of passion. I chose a time when my neighbors down the hall were at work. So that they don’t come to help, because they communicated well with their neighbors,” said Olga Ibragimova.
That same day, Ibragimova’s mother went to her 64-year-old mother’s home to report that her granddaughter had been killed. But she discovered that she had died. “My brother and I came to tell our grandmother, we opened the door, and there was also a corpse. She could feel, she felt her granddaughter very well. I don’t know [the reason], the police are here now,” she told reporters.
Grandmother Olesya Ibragimova had diabetes and leg problems, which is why she practically did not leave the house. According to Olga, after studying Olesya often “ran to her grandmother to buy groceries.” The Piece of Happiness Foundation promised Olga to financially help with the funeral of her daughter and mother, which will take place on February 5, and opened a fundraiser .
In the apartment where the murder took place, cats remained for some time and were looked after by Olesya Ibragimova. They could not be taken out for a long time because there were not enough carriers. “The apartment is being sealed, the cats need to be taken out. The cats saw everything. It's hell there now. Ringo is screaming non-stop, Nike has something wrong with his eye,” the foundation staff wrote after the murder. As a result, all the cats were placed in another “cathouse”.
The day after Olesya’s death, Viktor Bugun surrendered to the police. “During the interrogation, the accused confessed and stated that the motive was personal relationships,” said Yulia Ivanova, head of the press service of the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of Russia in Moscow.
The Lublin Interdistrict Prosecutor's Office reported that it is monitoring this investigation. On February 2, the Lyublinsky District Court of Moscow remanded Viktor Bugun into custody until March 31, 2026. He faces from six to 15 years in prison.
Author: Daria Morozova
Photo: A piece of happiness for a homeless cat / Telegram