The novel, which Lilin claimed was based on his experiences living among Siberian criminal gangs in his native Bender, became a bestseller in Italy, but was labeled a fake memoir by some journalists and historians.

While initially a vocal critic of Russia under Vladimir Putin, since 2014 Lilin has consistently taken anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western stances throughout the course of the Russo-Ukrainian War, and has attracted attention for expressing Eurasianist and antisemitic views, as well as spreading conspiracy theories, fake news and libelous comments.

Lilin claims to be the descendent of nomadic, Christianised, formerly tiger-venerating indigenous Siberian people who adorned themselves with tattoos meant to symbolise their life experiences and to serve as identification, a practice dating back 5,000 years.

[5] In an interview with Vanity Fair, Lilin stated that the Urkas were sent to do the Soviet regime's "dirty work" in ridding the city of pro-European Jews, Ukrainian nationalists, Romanians and Moldovans.

[7] Both Polian and Varese, as well as historian Donald Rayfield, anthropologist Michael Bobick and Kommersant journalist Elena Chernenko, further pointed out that the victims of population transfer in the Soviet Union were sent to Siberia, but never from there, and that Stalin could not have deported the Urkas to Bender in 1938, as the city was still part of Romania.

[12] A rehabilitation letter and data uncovered by Memorial regarding Lilin's great-grandfather show that he was not a deported Siberian criminal, but a Kurtamysh-based factory worker born in Tiraspol who was executed by the NKVD in 1938 on charges of being a Romanian agent.

At 24, he got a job as a fisherman on a ship in Ireland, then moved to Italy, where he got married, opened a tattoo parlour, wrote a bestseller and almost became a victim of a politically motivated assassination attempt.

[16][17][18] Lilin claims that at the age of 12, with the outbreak of the Transnistria War, he was handed a firearm for the first time, and was involved with other children in gathering intelligence and munitions during the battle of Bender.

[24] In several interviews, he claimed that his grandfather was a Siberian hunter and Gulag survivor[25] who, despite being anticommunist, fought as a sniper during World War II and was on the same convoy that took Vasily Zaitsev to Stalingrad.

[32] He has described two instances during the war in which he was nearly killed: the first occurring when he was shot in the chest with an AK-47, surviving thanks to his body armour, the second happening when a vehicle he was travelling in was capsized by a grenade launcher which left two comrades dead and himself with damage to his hearing.

[46] Richard Poplak of the National Post summarised the novel as "a bracing, true-crime curiosity that should interest those who want their understanding of the region massively shaken up, or their knowledge of knife fighting thoroughly upgraded".

Lilin's furious reactions to those who cast doubt on his criminal credentials can best be explained by the fact that some elements of the book do reflect his own experience while most of the rest is widely known in Russia to readers of quasi-fictional crime tales by Valery Karyshev and to viewers of the prison-based TV series Zona.

[24] In 2009, La Stampa journalist Anna Zafesova [it] went to Bender to investigate the claims made in the book on Siberian gang culture, and interviewed several old acquaintances of Lilin, as well as historians of the region, who concurred that the story was an invention.

[9][8] Varese further noted how the novel treats the fictional Benya Krik as a historical character, and wrote that while the scenes depicting the brutality of prison life may have been based on Lilin's personal experiences, the rest of the novel was probably derivative of prior books and TV series.

[8] Anthropologist Michael Bobick criticised the novel's portrayal of the city of Bender as being particularly crime-ridden, and accused Lilin of "[peddling] Westerners their own deepest, darkest fears about Transdniester and Russia" and of having "found [...] a captive audience uninterested in the facts".

[10] Internet forums frequented by Bender residents show reactions to the novel that Bobick states "range from disbelief and laughter to anger and outrage at the author's hollow attempts to besmirch his native city.

"[50] Zakhar Prilepin compared the premise of the novel to a contemporary German author writing about "a squadron of former SS officers hiding in the forests outside Berlin, listening to Wagner with their children and grandchildren, reading aloud from the works of Junge and banging on tin drums as they rob passing trains".

[60] Lilin claims to be a "kolshik" ("piercer", a slang term for "tattooer", from the Russian word kolot, "to pierce"), a hereditary title given to Siberian tattoo artists who act as "psychologist, judge or confessor" to those they mark.

[68][1] In 2021, Lilin became a Green Europe candidate in the Milan municipal election, but dropped out after his prior links to CasaPound and members of the neo-Nazi group Lealtà Azione were brought up on social media.

[71] In a 2014 opinion piece, he called Eurasianism a "worthy and logical alternative to American dominion",[72] and stated in 2021 that he would be prepared to vote for the right-wing Lega party if it mended diplomatic relations with Russia.

In a series of interviews and writings during the late 2000s and early 2010s, Lilin denounced the Second Chechen War,[30][54] the law "On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development",[76] the beating of Oleg Kashin and the murder of Russian journalists.

[78] In a 2013 interview with la Repubblica, Lilin stated:I am appalled by how things are going with Putin, his homophobic laws, the censorship, pedophilia used as a criminal means of earning money.

[83]In 2019, while commenting on the alleged financial dealings between United Russia and the Italian Lega party, Lilin compared the situation of Russians living in Italy to that of Jews in Nazi Germany.

La vera storia, Adriano Sofri criticised the book for promoting the idea that Ukrainian national identity was invented by Poland in an effort to destabilise the Russian Empire, minimising the significance of the Holodomor, and completely ignoring the Executed Renaissance.

[96] During a conversation with Russian writer Aleksandr Garros [ru], Lilin revealed that he believed in the Jewish war conspiracy theory, and that he had been influenced in this belief by Licio Gelli.

[101] Later that year, he shared an article from the German conspiracist website Wahrheit fuer Deutschland claiming that a Ukrainian pilot had confessed to having shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

[104] In 2023, he posted a video on his YouTube channel claiming that a Ukrainian war veteran in Ternopil had murdered his wife and children after mistaking a French flag on an inflatable castle they were using for a Russian one, providing no source for the information.

In subsequent tweets, he claimed that the post was in response to Boldrini's meeting with far-right Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy, whom Lilin accused of being in league with Islamic terrorists.

[111][112][113] On 9 August 2024, Lilin uploaded a video on his YouTube channel in which he claimed that his Italian passport had been confiscated and that he had "escaped" Italy on account of legal inquiries and of being declared a Russian foreign agent.

[114][115] An investigation into Lilin's finances by the Italian UIF (Unità di Informazione Finanziaria) found that he had been receiving substantial undeclared cash payments over a two year period, 70% of which from untraceable sources paid through Russian cryptocurrency channels.