He went to Burning Man chasing a dream — it ended in mystery

In the hot desert of Black Rock City, an ephemeral town in northwestern Nevada that temporarily exists for the annual Burning Man festival, a heart-shaped mirror adorned with peacock-like wooden rays stood as a destination for festivalgoers to take mirror selfies. Some held up peace signs while snapping photos, while others held hands and showcased their costumes. With the reflection of the festival in the background, such a photo would be Instagram-worthy in the “default world,” what Burners refer to as everyday life. However, the pictures of this particular art installation, which was intended to represent the idea that everyone reflects and embodies love, are now relics of a tragedy. 

Vadim Kruglov, the 37-year-old man who created the art installation, was found deceased in a “pool of blood” on the night of August 30—the penultimate night of this year’s festival. 

Some of Kruglov’s friends told Salon that he was excited about sharing his art with the Burning Man community as a first-time Burner. Indeed, art is a central part of the nine-day-long celebration, which runs on a gifting economy. Installations are one of many ways the 70,000 to 80,000 annual attendees contribute to the community for the week. Others include providing attendees with cold drinks, offering a discussion, workshop, photography, or useful supplies. 

Before Kruglov set off for the festival, he met up with some friends in New York, where he lived for 10 years. He showed one friend a sketch for the art installation and expressed his excitement about attending Burning Man. Then he left on a flight to Reno, bound for the festival.

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Since the 1990s, the pilgrimage to Black Rock City has attracted people from all walks of life. Due to its liberating and anarchic nature, there is a consensus that Burning Man symbolizes the legacy of the socially libertarian spirit of the 1960s counterculture. Attendees often describe the experience as transcendent and transformational. Over the last decade, it has become a popular destination for tech executives, billionaires, and celebrities. As Salon has previously reported, the same environment that many found liberating and transformational also created conditions where sexual assault, harassment, and seasonal worker mistreatment could thrive.

In many ways, Kruglov was a free spirit himself. While little is yet known about the circumstances surrounding his death at the 2025 festival, friends and family are helping paint a picture of who he was and what may have motivated him to go to Burning Man in the first place.

Kruglov moved to New York City in 2015 from Omsk, Russia, a city in southwestern Siberia with a population of over one million. Kruglov’s sister Lier Olga Igorevna, who lives in Omsk with her daughter and their grandmother, told Salon in an email written in Russian and translated to English, that it was her brother’s dream to live in New York City.

“One day he called me and said, ‘Sister, I’m in New York, can you believe it? I made my dream come true, come visit!’” Igorevna wrote in the email. “[He] stopped at nothing and nothing could stand in his way; his determination always drove him to achieve his goals to the end.”

Kruglov’s sister said he was a churchgoer and quietly did good deeds, like entertaining children, dressing up as Santa Claus, cooking for parishioners, cleaning, and giving free rides to the elderly.

“He was a sociable, open and warm-hearted person,” Igorevna said. “He traveled a lot, worked in aviation and wrote poetry. He always stood for honesty and justice and carried love in his heart.”

Kruglov had worked as a fiber optics cable installer in New York, but a little over a year ago, he left the city to embark on a walkabout. He traveled across the country, supporting himself with contract work. He spent time in Iowa, Michigan, and most memorably, Alaska, where he operated cranes, forklifts, and anchored vessels as a dock worker at Pacific Star Seafoods. And after Alaska, he went to stay with friends in Tacoma and the greater Seattle area.

Lyubov Krasnova, a former colleague of Kruglov’s based in Russia, worked with Kruglov as a flight attendant in Russia for Transaero before it went bankrupt. They lost touch after he left for America, but reconnected online this past spring. Krasnova said Kruglov told her how, over the past 10 years, he had become fluent in English, bought a car, and become a professional in his field. He also confided in her about his challenges being an immigrant in America, which centered around job searching, the immigration process, and finding a place to live. 

Kruglov wrote to her about Burning Man and what he envisioned for himself in the future. “He just wanted to live, to the fullest, he wanted a family, he told me that several times,” she told Salon via  Instagram Messenger. “He was meant to live many, many happy years, but someone stole his life. It’s so unfair, and it’s very hard to believe that it really happened.”

“I miss him,” Krasnova added. “After this tragedy, I once again feel that death is always near, and that there is nothing logical about life.”

When Kruglov was based in the Seattle-Tacoma area, he connected with the Ukrainian and Russian Burning Man community there. Nina Nester, who was part of the community, told Salon via Facebook Messenger that Kruglov was respectful, friendly, and very social. He had a unique way of talking to people, as if he had known them forever. His Seattle friends loved him.

He was a “good guy,” and “not confrontational” at all, she said. Nester said that Kruglov wanted to attend Burning Man because the community is “big about it.” “We have multiple camps, and he had a spot in our camp,” Nester said. 

However, according to Nester he ended up joining a “random camp” with people he didn’t know very well.

“They offered him opportunities to build with his hands and he was super motivated to give back,” Nestor explained. She expressed disappointment that he camped with “strangers.” “They saw that he didn’t come back for days, and his belongings stayed untouched,” she said. “Nobody told us.”

“We thought his phone died or he was having too much fun with new people,” Nester added. 

Kruglov’s sister shared a similar understanding of the events.

“People from his camp noticed that Vadim’s tent had been empty for several days, and his ‘friends’ from the camp hadn’t seen him,” Igorevna said via email. “There are witnesses who saw Vadim throughout the day on Saturday, in the morning, afternoon, and evening.”

The last sighting was at 7:55 p.m., 10 minutes before his death, near the tent where he was killed, she said.

Left with few answers about his untimely death and what led to it, Kruglov’s community doesn’t understand how something like this could have happened to someone like him. 

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Authorities are investigating Kruglov’s death as a homicide, but the nature of the festival makes it a difficult case to investigate. Black Rock Desert is over two hours from any major city with resources, such as forensic services, as Salon has previously reported. On the playa, attendees often wear masks and costumes. They use playa names, such as cactus or fuzzypants, making possible suspects hard to identify. Investigators say that when it comes to a homicide, the first 48 hours after a crime is reported are crucial. 

On September 17, the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office released a statement that Kruglov appeared to have been killed by a “single stab wound” to the neck. In the press release, the sheriff’s office included a picture of a chef’s knife with a green sheath as an example of the “suspected weapon” used in the crime. 

Police have received hundreds of tips. They believe the homicide took place between 8 and 9:30 p.m. in the area of “8 o’clock.” The playa is arranged as a semicircle, and radial streets are named as if their position were a clock face. Streets that circle the center, where the Man was, are named in alphabetical order. 

A woman who attended the festival and asked to remain anonymous told Salon that she rode her bike by the area while the burn event was happening, not too long after Kruglov was killed. In a phone interview with Salon, she said that the vicinity around where he was found was dark and relatively empty aside from the police presence. 

Daniel Vandenbark-Woodward, a five-year Burner from California, camped near where Kruglov was found. In a phone call with Salon, he described the area as Russian-speaking, and the tent near where Kruglov was found was “very quiet” and “very private.” Notably, when he and his campmates returned from the burn to police activity near their tent, he said he did not sense “urgency” from the police. 

Now, he’s worried about what a homicide at Burning Man could mean for safety at the festival in the future. While there have been deaths at the festival, this is the first time there’s been a homicide. 

“This exposes an Achilles heel to the Burn, and other people potentially trying to get away with something this awful,” Vandenbark-Woodward said. “That’s probably actually my biggest fear, and that’s probably the thing that scares me the most.”

The Burning Man Project, the organization that manages the festival, said on its blog that it’s doing everything it can “to assist the Sheriff’s investigation.” In New York and Seattle, friends have hosted memorials and have raised over $43,000 to bring Kruglov home to Omsk. Secret Witness is offering a $5,000 cash reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the suspect. 

This year, Burning Man saw an unusually high number of arrests. Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen told Salon that he believes there were a few reasons behind this trend: fewer days of rain, more participants than last year, and a few more deputies from his office. Allen said every year is “different” at the festival. 

“It is dependent on what the cultural or political climate is at the time as well as what the popular illicit substances are as well as it appears to be the testing grounds, at least for our interactions, of new or upcoming illicit substances,” Allen said. One attendee this year, who asked to remain anonymous, said that this year, ketamine was a very popular drug at the festival.

As for the death of Kruglov, one person who camped with him on Instagram has been calling for federal authorities to assist since the homicide took place on federal land. Burning Man takes place on public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. “We can request the assistance of the ‘feds’ at any time, if applicable,” Allen told Salon. “They do have access to more resources, but are not always able to assist.”

Allen said as it stands, they don’t have “all the information,” and they have not requested outside assistance. “When I have all of the available information, I will make a factual decision to either request assistance or continue to move forward on our own.”

Back in Omsk, Kruglov’s family is struggling with the uncertainty around his death. “His remains are in New York, the documents for transportation to Russia have been in preparation for three weeks already,” Igorevna said. “Unfortunately, we don’t know how much longer it will take, there are complications in the course of the investigation, which is causing delays.”

Igorevna said she misses her brother so much. “This tragedy has forever taken away my chance to see him and hug him tightly,” she said. “I will never again hear his laughter or his voice, those beloved words ‘Sister, hi.’ As I write this, tears come to my eyes… it’s still so very hard.”