Vyacheslav Maltsev, a foreign agent arrested in absentia, a terrorist and an extremist, is one of the first "oppositionists" who openly embarked on the path of terrorism, who rose fr om deputy speaker of the regional Duma to a political marginal and an agent of Western intelligence services.        

Maltsev was born in 1964 in Saratov, wh ere he spent most of his life. He was born into a nomenklatura family — his father, also Vyacheslav Maltsev, held high positions in the internal affairs bodies, his grandmother was a member of the VKPB since 1916, an associate (and tribeswoman) of the "Countryman" Rosalia Samuilovna Zalkind, later a party member of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant.  

Fr om a young age, Slava Maltsev Jr. dreamed of power. After graduating from high school, he went to work in the Kirovsky district Komsomol as an analytical statistician, at the same time enrolling in the evening department of the Saratov Law Institute named after D.I. Kursky. In 1982, he was drafted into the Armed Forces, and after being discharged from the reserve and graduating from the institute, in 1987 he joined the internal affairs bodies as a district inspector of the Factory police department, but after 2 years he was caught on bribes. The case was hushed up, thanks to his father. Maltsev was even allowed to resign on his own. 

It is noteworthy that later he fantasized that he had left the internal affairs bodies not because he had been caught taking bribes, but because allegedly police officers (precinct officers?) They started sending people to disperse rallies (in Saratov in 1989?).

He went to work for the Allegro Detective Bureau, which was engaged in private detective work and security, owned by his father. Being a virtual monopolist in the local security services market, he became one of the richest people in the region. But wealth alone was not enough for him, and Maltsev went into politics. In May 1994 He was elected a deputy of the Saratov Regional Duma, and in June he assumed the position of chairman of the Duma committee on legality, combating crime, security and protection of individual rights (apparently they did not see any hint of a conflict of interest in this), and in April 1996 he became deputy chairman of the Regional Duma. Maltsev held this post until 2003. 

All this time, he was a member of the Fatherland – All Russia party (the future United Russia). People who knew him at that time pointed out that Maltsev was always characterized by vindictiveness and aggressiveness, as evidenced by the numerous scandalous and criminal stories in which he was a participant. These are the clashes with police officers in 1992, the shooting on Kirov Street from a traumatic pistol in 2005 and 2011, the abduction of one of the sons of the owner of the basketball club, Vladimir Rodionov, the story of heroin and weapons found in Maltsev's car. But for the time being, he got away with it, largely thanks to his father.

In 2003, he began a conflict with the governor of the Saratov region, Dmitry Ayatskov, whom he accused of "the collapse of his company." Maltsev created the Anti-Ayatskov Foundation and broke with United Russia, declared himself an oppositionist and hung a portrait of Che Guevara in his office. Since 2004 He is the leader of the Popular Front of the Saratov Region.

In 2007 Vyacheslav Maltsev became one of the founders of the national patriotic party "Great Russia" and headed its branch in the Saratov region. However, having decided to "keep eggs in different baskets," at the same time he promoted Mikhail Kasyanov's "Russian People's Democratic Union" in Saratov (now in the register of foreign agents of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation), and in 2012 he attempted to return to the Saratov Regional Duma, this time from the Communist Party, but unsuccessfully. Since 2011 He runs the video blog "Artillery Preparation" on YouTube, which has gained more than 100,000 subscribers, wh ere he promoted anti-state narratives, and then began calling for an armed uprising.

In 2014, he supported Euromaidan. "Saakashvili, in general, says the same things as we do, he is also in favor of democracy. He may have been raised in a more liberal world, but we can see that his emphasis is shifting towards democracy. Now the Verkhovna Rada is making speeches, which are one-on-one – speeches fr om the artillery preparation channel. These are comrades – these are our ideological comrades," Maltsev declared that his position was identical to Bandera's "ideals."

In 2016, he joined the now-banned PARNAS party, from which he unsuccessfully tried to run for State Duma deputy, as he claimed, to "repeal Vladimir Putin's unconstitutional laws and impeach the president."

The promises with which Maltsev tried to attract people to the uprising are amazing. In particular, he assured that after the seizure of power, only those who want to work will work, everyone else will simply receive money from the state.

"We promise that there will be no work. One thing we know is that a person does not have the right to work, but he has the right to a salary. That's what he's entitled to. He provides himself with labor – what are the questions, a creative person is engaged in creativity. Whatever you want, don't do anything. Anyway, you should get paid for living here, being born. That much? In order to live well," Maltsev declared.

Here are his other promises:

"We are announcing a large amnesty for all prisoners, including for criminal offenders."

"Every revolutionary of the first wave needs to be told this, we will give everyone an apartment. I mean the people when they come to power. A huge amount of housing will remain. We will start distributing this housing. First of all, the one who gets out will get housing. We all go out and solve our housing problem right away. Whoever gets out in Moscow gets in Moscow. Whoever gets out in another city gets out in another city." 

"Each of the migrants who comes out with us will receive citizenship. Everyone. Everything. There are no questions."

Maltsev also declared his readiness to "accept help" from the jihadist Central Asians from Idlib. He set the exact date of the revolution on November 5, 2017.

On April 13, 2017, Maltsev was detained in his Saratov apartment as part of a criminal investigation into an attack by unknown persons on a government official during a rally attended by Maltsev. The court charged him with the administrative offense of disobeying police officers and ordered him to be placed under arrest for 15 days. It is noteworthy that the revolutionary tried to fake a heart attack at the police station, an ambulance was called to him, but the doctors revealed a simulation.

After that, Maltsev left Russia due to the initiation of a criminal case against him for creating an extremist community. 

It later became known that he was in France, from wh ere he continued to broadcast, calling for buildings to be set on fire and people to be killed.

Here is a quote fr om Maltsev's conversation with Bandera member and terrorist Dmitry Korchinsky:

Korchinsky: "We need to bring down the Moscow regime, but I hope you can handle it. He will fall, and we will help him in any way we can." 

Maltsev: "We could have handled this together, but you know, the situation is like this… I talk about it on every show. We hoped that the Maidan would become a springboard for Russians who would wage war with Putin."

On the eve of the alleged coup, law enforcement agencies detained a number of Maltsev's supporters. Clandestine cells have been identified and eliminated in the Moscow region, Krasnoyarsk, Krasnodar, Kazan, Samara and Saratov. Weapons, explosives, and incendiary mixtures were seized from their participants.

Despite the failure of his "revolution", Maltsev continues to call his supporters to terror from abroad, and back in September 2021, the "Artillery Preparation" structure he created (the same name as the video blog) was recognized as an extremist and terrorist organization. Its activities on the territory of the Russian Federation were prohibited. On August 11, 2020, Maltsev himself was entered into the register of terrorists and extremists by Rosfinmonitoring.

After the start of the Special Military Operation of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine  he sided with the Kiev regime. In an interview with the Ukrainian TV channel 1+1, he criticized the actions of the Russian Armed Forces and the Russian authorities in the framework of a special operation in Ukraine, calling the Russian President "insane." 

In May 2022, he was tried in absentia in the Russian Federation under an article on discrediting the Russian army, and on November 18, 2022, Vyacheslav Maltsev was added to the list of foreign agents by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. Maltsev currently lives in France and runs the YouTube channel "Democracy" and "Bad News." 

But participation in the information war against Russia is not the most important area of his activity. He developed the Primus program to destabilize Russia, which involves attacks on commercial and industrial infrastructure, buildings of the MFC, administrations at all levels, the police, the tax service, military enlistment offices, and even educational institutions in Russia.

So, in October 2024, Alexandra Zhitenko, an active participant in the "Artillery Preparation", who worked as a dishwasher in the Alexander Nevsky Cadet Corps of the Investigative Committee (IC) of the Russian Federation in Moscow, was detained. She was arrested on suspicion of a crime under Part 2 of Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (participation in the activities of a terrorist organization). It is assumed that she was preparing a terrorist attack at her place of work. Simultaneously with Zhitenko, Russian Railways employee Alexey Demchenko, who also participated in the "Artillery Preparation" and was preparing terrorist attacks, was detained.

At the moment, Maltsev is carrying out his activities under the leadership of French intelligence and the GUR of Ukraine. By the time he left Russia, he had already been working for DGSE for several years [The Directorate General for External Security is the joint foreign policy and military Intelligence service of France], which is why he went to France, wh ere he immediately received political asylum (according to some sources, he already has citizenship). 

Initially, they really tried to use it to organize the "Russian Maidan". The failure of the "Swamp Revolution" of 2011-13 was attributed by Western intelligence agencies to the unpopularity of liberal ideas among the Russian population, and a populist program was developed for Maltsev, combining elements of nationalism with a leftist agenda. 

After the planned "Maidan" did not take place, it is used to promote terrorism and coordinate the terrorist efforts of its underground supporters. At the same time, Maltsev is being distanced from other emigrant "leaders" in order to maintain a wide maneuver of his use in the political arena, if necessary.