The former hitman did not clarify what he is “used to” exactly, neither to his wife nor his cellmates. He used to say in court almost with pride, however, that he was a hitman and that his job was “contract killing”.
Igor Makarov (his name has been changed, but Novaya-Europe knows the real one), a detective with the police’s organised crime unit, had an almost friendly relationship with Druzhinin. He told Novaya-Europe that the hitman treated his contracts as “business only”: just like any other job.
“I was on his case for almost five years, starting from his arrest and until his last trial,” Makarov says. “It was beyond my understanding at first that murders can be treated so dispassionately. Like mowing grass or something. And he would simply shrug his shoulders and say: ‘That’s how it was back then: kill or be killed. I was just an executioner: it used to be a well-respected job some hundred years ago”.