Vyacheslav Maltsev

Vyacheslav Maltsev was born on June 7, 1964, in Saratov. In 1981, he graduated from secondary school No. 8, after which Maltsev worked as a statistician in the Kirov district Committee of the Komsomol and enrolled in the evening department of the Saratov State Law Academy. In 1982–1985, he served in the border troops, after which he transferred to the full-time department of the institute. In 1987 he graduated from the Saratov Law Institute. After studying, in 1987 he got a job in the police as a district inspector of the Factory police department, but in 1989 he quit because police officers began to be sent to disperse rallies.

On October 18, 1989, he established the Allegro security agency, and served as General Director until 1996. According to Vyacheslav, his agency employed two thousand employees. At that time, he was supposedly one of the richest people in the Saratov region. Subsequently, Maltsev stated that he had sold all his property. Since 2019, he has been a member of the Board of the International Association "Institute of National Policy".

In December 2011, Maltsev began hosting the political channel "Artpodgotovka" on YouTube, the popularity of which increased dramatically after the elections to the State Duma. The main part of the content consists of the releases of the "Bad News" program, which airs on weekdays at 21:00. They are Maltsev's monologues on the topic of the latest news from Russia and the world. Periodically on his channel he holds debates and joint broadcasts with his supporters, as well as various public and political figures (for example, Stanislav Belkovsky, Stepan Demura, Dmitry Demushkin, Dmitry Ivanov, Olga Li, Alexey Navalny, Alexey Venediktov). Also at the "Artpodgotovka" there was a system of "revcoins", in which points are awarded on a virtual account every day, which after the onset of "democracy" will be transferred to all donors and supporters of Vyacheslav in real money.

In fact, a whole political movement "Artpodgotovka" took shape around Maltsev, the most used slogan of Vyacheslav and supporters of "Artpodgotovka": "We are not waiting, but we are preparing", which called for preparing for protests on November 5, 2017.

The YouTube channel "Artpodgotovka" on the eve of the November 5 protests on the night of November 4 was blocked for Russian citizens, the videos were not deleted.

Currently, Maltsev continues to release the program "Bad News" on his video blog .

Activists of the Vyacheslav Maltsev movement themselves were also persecuted: In the Krasnoyarsk region, a supporter was detained who was traveling by train to Moscow to take part in a protest on November 5, but was detained by police officers.

On November 2, a search was conducted in the apartment of a Saratov supporter, 200 grams of TNT and 5 molotov cocktails were found. The detainee claims that explosive substances were planted to him during the search of the apartment. A criminal case has been initiated against him under Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Terrorism".

On November 3, 2017, numerous communities of supporters of Vyacheslav and participants of the "Artpodgotovka" were blocked on the VKontakte social network at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation on October 31, 2017. Also on November 3 in Moscow, the FSB, together with the Centre for Combating Extremism, detained the participants of the "Artpodgotovka", cold weapons and molotov cocktails were seized. The detainees allegedly planned to set fire to administrative buildings and attack the police on November 4 and 5. Criminal cases were initiated under Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Terrorism".

On February 27, 2018, arms dealers were detained by FSB officers in Kaluga. During the search, 27 firearms, more than 200 rounds of ammunition, explosive devices, as well as anti-government leaflets and "Artpodgotovka" paraphernalia were found in March 2018, the human rights organization Memorial recognized a supporter of "Artpodgotovka" Roman Maryan as a political prisoner. In 2017, Roman was arrested on suspicion of preparing mass riots. Members of the organization "New Greatness" who met each other in the Telegram chat "Artpodgotovka" were also arrested. They were accused of creating an extremist community.

On October 4, 2019, the Rostov Regional Court found 24-year-old Vladislav Mordasov and 19-year-old Yan Sidorov guilty of "organizing mass riots" and sentenced them to 6 years and 7 months and 6.5 years in prison, respectively. On November 5, 2017, Mordasov and Sidorov together went to the Soviets Square in Rostov-on-Don to the House of Soviets of the Rostov region with posters "Return the land to the Rostov fire victims" and "The Government resigns", after which they were detained. According to the prosecution's version, they allegedly were going to arrange mass riots on Sovetov Square, arrange "arson, pogroms, destroy property", "inflict bodily harm" to police officers and other authorities, seize the administration building of the Rostov region. Mordasov and Sidorov complained of beatings and torture after their detention.

Maltsev, in his speeches since 2013, talked about the inevitable revolution in Russia, setting a date for its start on November 5, 2017 (his supporters called the revolution "5.11.17"). On this day, he called on his supporters to speak in the central squares of the cities, protest against the current government and seize power in the people's hands. For its calls to overthrow the government, the RF IC initiated a criminal case against Maltsev, the organization "Artillery Preparation" was recognized as extremist, and its members were detained in the fall of 2017.

Sergei Ryzhov, a supporter of Maltsev, was detained on November 1, 2017, for preparing a terrorist attack in Saratov – Vyacheslav Maltsev's hometown. He has been in jail for more than three years.

On November 5, 2017, many police, the "Okhotny Ryad" station was blocked. The police conducted random searches of citizens, many were taken away in motor vehicles. At 13:00, 82 people were detained in Moscow, according to OVD-Info. 2 people were detained in St. Petersburg, 4 in Krasnoyarsk. A representative of Echo of Moscow was also detained. Later, 10 more people were detained in St. Petersburg near the Smolny Institute.

At 14:00, TASS announced that the number of detainees had increased to 200 people on Manezhnaya Square in Moscow.

At 16:00, it became known about more than 300 detainees. Several detainees were charged under Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Preparation of a terrorist attack", a revolver the Nagant M1895, a grenade and explosives were found in their car; human rights activist Dinar Idrisov claims that weapons and explosive objects were planted by law enforcement officers .

At 21:00, according to OVD-Info, the number of detainees increased to 448 people. The most arrests took place in Moscow – 339, in St. Petersburg 21 people, according to unconfirmed reports, 49 of them are minors. There were about 112 people left to spend the night in police departments on the night of November 6.

1. Vyacheslav Maltsev calls himself a national democrat and adheres to the ideas of direct democracy. In order to establish a direct democracy Maltsev proposes to install webcameras in cabinets and apartments of all state officials including ministers, members of Parliament etc. and to bestow on every citizen the right to control the work of the state and its representatives via the Internet. According to Maltsev electronic elections should also be widely accepted.
2. Cancellation of the anti-constitutional laws such as the Yarovaya Law and many others.
3. Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms.
4. Stands on the principles of "Freedom of speech", "Freedom of religion" and more.
5. Advocate for cooperation with NATO to resist China's desire to seize some lands of Siberia and Far East.

On August 22, 2016, during the first election debate on the Rossiya-1 TV channel, Maltsev, representing PARNAS, made a number of harsh statements against President Putin. Despite the fact that the topic of the debate was the Russian economy, Maltsev focused on criticizing the head of state. He stressed that "every vote for PARNAS is a vote against Putin," and promised to initiate impeachment proceedings if the party passes the State Duma. The politician also linked problems in the Russian economy with Putin's personality, stating the need to "remove from power the main brake that hinders our economy"

A well-known Putin supporter, the leader of the Night Wolves biker club, Alexander "Surgeon" Zaldostanov, said that he would "ask" Maltsev for these words and "hang him by the tongue" As soon as we take him and put him on a stake for real, immediately everyone will forget about what he called for," the "Surgeon" said. Nikolay Levichev, a member of the CEC from Fair Russia, expressed the opinion that the police should be called for the proposal to "impale an opponent" and "take a man in handcuffs off the air". A source in the PARNAS party told the "Gazeta.Ru", that Maltsev prepared his statements independently.

Matvey Ganapolsky and Daria Mitina note that with his rhetoric and behavior, Maltsev resembles a politician from the LDPR party Vladimir Zhirinovsky, also known for his harsh ambiguous statements. Zhirinovsky himself, during the debate with Maltsev, claimed that Vyacheslav studied his, Zhirinovsky's, early speeches.

In his defense, Vyacheslav Maltsev claims that his opponents do not have any dirt on him. For the reason that during his work as a deputy of the Saratov Regional Duma, as well as deputy chairman of the Saratov Regional Duma, he did not steal and counteracted corruption.

Vyacheslav is married to Anna Maltseva, has sons Roman, Valery and daughters Varvara and Sofia. Vyacheslav's grandmother worked as a deputy chairman of the regional executive committee in the 1930s and 1940s.

In 2013, Valery Maltsev said that he would provide all possible support to the People's Alliance party in Saratov. In 2016, both Maltsev's sons were nominated in the PARNASSUS list: Roman Maltsev was the first number in the territorial group in the Saratov region, and Valery Maltsev was the second number in the Smolenskaya, Kaluga Region group. At the same time, Roman Maltsev was a candidate in the Balakovosky district of the Saratov region.

All information was translated from the Russian Wikipedia page.

• Official Website Archived April 13, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
• «Ведущий плохих новостей» Вячеслав Мальцев
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• Мальцев, Вячеслав Вячеславович – Википедия