Young Minsk groomer left her children with their grandmother and went to Chelyabinsk to a drug production laboratory

The Chelyabinsk Regional Court delivered a verdict in a case concerning the creation of a large drug laboratory. Among those convicted is Belarusian Anastasia Gerasimovich, who previously worked as a groomer (trimming pets). On 'Onliner', she has a high rating — 4.8 — for dozens of completed orders.

From grooming courses to a drug laboratory

36-year-old Anastasia Gerasimovich was registered in the Baranovichi district, but actually lived in Minsk. She has a higher education, is divorced, with two young children. Before leaving Belarus, Anastasia left her children with her mother — in her court testimony, she claimed that she went to Moscow for grooming courses, which an acquaintance allegedly promised to pay for.

According to the defense's version, it was this acquaintance and his friend who later, through deceit and threats, forced Anastasia to work in an underground laboratory for the production of the drug mephedrone in the Chelyabinsk region. Gerasimovich assured the court that she deliberately sabotaged equipment and reported the laboratory's coordinates to an acquaintance, an operative in Belarus, to help uncover the crime.

The court rejected this version as untrue. The verdict states that Gerasimovich voluntarily and knowingly joined the organized group for financial gain, moved freely around the city (she was seen in a shopping center), constantly received transfers from unknown individuals to her bank cards, actively corresponded with colleagues about the process of 'cooking' the drug and even suggested equipment improvements.

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Scheme and laboratory

One of the group's leaders was Russian citizen Alexey Stupin, who recruited personnel for the production. It was Stupin who, at the end of 2023 in Minsk, recruited Gerasimovich and two other Belarusians (whose names are redacted in the verdict) to work as 'laboratory assistants' — for a promised $500 for each kilogram of mephedrone produced, and later Gerasimovich was personally offered $2000 for one 'cooking' cycle. Stupin paid for their plane tickets from Moscow to Chelyabinsk and provided money for living expenses.

In January 2024, three Belarusians arrived in the city of Miass, Chelyabinsk region, where they rented an apartment. Chemical reagents for production were collected from a garage in a neighboring city, and the laboratory itself was located in a small house on a garden plot — with a reactor, ventilation, and special equipment, disguised as an ordinary outbuilding. Gerasimovich and her accomplices produced mephedrone with a total mass of at least 18.3 kilograms.

On February 28, 2024, the police raided the laboratory and arrested Gerasimovich along with two accomplices, confiscating the finished drug, reactor, and chemical equipment.

Stupin, who by that time was coordinating the laboratory's work remotely from Bali, was apprehended only a month later when he returned to Russia on a flight from Dubai.

Sentence

It also turned out that earlier, while still in Belarus, Gerasimovich had been punished for acquiring and possessing drugs. At that time, she received two years in a penal colony, but with a deferred sentence — due to having young children.

The Chelyabinsk Regional Court found Stupin and Gerasimovich guilty under Part 5 of Article 228.1 of the Criminal Code of Russia (illegal production of drugs by an organized group, on a particularly large scale).

He received 16 years of imprisonment in a strict-regime penal colony, while the Belarusian woman was given 10 years in a general-regime penal colony.

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