Moscow court jails Communist Oleg Mikhailov, who recently lost his State Duma seat

Moscow's Basmanny District Court has ordered pretrial detention for Oleg Mikhailov, a former deputy of the State Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament) and the former head of the Communist Party's branch in the Komi Republic. He is charged with justifying terrorism over a social media post supporting jailed political scientist Boris Kagarlitsky, and faces up to seven years in prison. Mikhailov was detained on October 21 at Domodedovo Airport as he returned from vacation.

The case was planned in advance

The independent outlet Meduza reports that the presidential administration had urged Communist leaders not to nominate strong regional candidates who had beaten United Russia in single-member districts in the previous election. Mikhailov was one of them. The party partly complied, but he ran both in his district and on the federal party list, where his original position gave him no realistic chance. A party source said the leadership gave almost no money for his district campaign and that the Kremlin sent "hints" of a criminal case if he did not withdraw. Meduza has learned that an investigation was planned regardless, and that the Federal Security Service (FSB) had been examining his social media accounts since 2024. Mikhailov lost his reelection bid in September 2026.

Political career

Mikhailov was born in 1987 in Pechora, studied biology at Syktyvkar State University, earned a doctorate and worked at Komi's Institute of Biology. He joined the party in 2007 and went on to become a Syktyvkar city councillor, head of the regional committee and a member of the regional legislature. He backed protests against a landfill at Shiyes station, supported compulsory Komi-language teaching in schools, and drew activists of differing views into the party's orbit. He also criticized the Kremlin-appointed regional leaders Sergey Gaplikov and Vladimir Uiba. In 2021 he won his single-member Duma district.

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Mikhailov did not vote for the law on "discrediting the army," but he backed other measures, including the ban on "LGBT propaganda" and a law allowing the FSB to set up its own pretrial detention centers.