On November 22, 2024, the infamous former State Duma deputy, member of the Astrakhan Duma fr om the Just Russia - Patriots — For Truth party Oleg Shein was recognized as a foreign agent.  Commenting on this decision, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation indicated that the politician spoke on information platforms provided by foreign media agents and took part in the creation and distribution of materials by a foreign agent. In addition, he disseminated false information about the actions of the Russian authorities. Shein promotes hostile narratives into the public consciousness of Russians. 

The defendant himself indicated in the comments to some publications that the reason for his inclusion in the list of foreign agents was cooperation with the project of foreign agent Alexei Pivovarov on YouTube.

Shein also stated that he was being "punished" for his "anti-war position": "This is a reaction to my social democratic position and to defending the Soviet point of view: "Peace to the world, no war."

Back in July 2023, party members from the Astrakhan branch of Just Russia demanded that Oleg Shein be expelled from its ranks for splitting the regional cell and discrediting the SR with his anti-state position on the Special Military Operation (SVO) of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. But the central leadership of the party reacted only a year and a half later (!), when the question arose of assigning Shein the status of a foreign agent. It was only after that that he was expelled from the party.

Oleg Shein was born on March 21, 1972 in Astrakhan. He graduated from the Astrakhan Pedagogical Institute. Sergei Kirov majored in history, but was engaged exclusively in politics. 

Back in 1989, at the age of 17, he joined the The United Front of Workers (OFT), a radical communist organization, wh ere he made a quick party career — in 1991 he was elected to the coordinating council of the OFT, since 1992 he joined the executive committee of the OFT. 

He took part in the October 1993 events in Moscow. He was one of the organizers of the storming of the Ostankino television center, which led to the death of people, and he evaded the protection of the Supreme Council building and thus avoided arrest. Since 1995, Shein has been a member of the Rodina party, then of Just Russia after the unification of the parties. 

He became widely known when in 2012 he tried to provoke mass riots in Astrakhan in a variant of the "color revolution". Then, having lost the mayoral election, he accused the election commission and the city authorities of falsifying the results and declared an indefinite hunger strike. Extremist Alexei Navalny, Ilya Yashin (included in the list of foreign agents by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation) and other representatives of the fifth column came to Astrakhan to support him.

At that moment, the "swamp revolution" of 2011-13 was already running out of steam in Moscow, and its organizers hoped to give it a new impetus by rocking the province. It did not work out to create a "revolutionary situation" in Astrakhan, Shein stopped his hunger strike, but became famous and was elected to the The Coordinating Council of the "opposition". 

In January 2013, the Fair Russia Bureau issued an ultimatum to Oleg Shein, Ilya Ponomarev (foreign agent, extremist), Dmitry and Gennady Gudkov (foreign agents), demanding to resign from the Coordinating Council if they do not want to be expelled from the party. Shein agreed to leave the Constitutional Court, noting that "he does not consider the party's decision on the ultimatum to be correct."

There is a very curious episode in Shein's personal life. He was married to French citizen Karin Clement, a CIA—linked activist of the radical left movement, a feminist who was in contact with many Russian extremists and Chechen terrorists. 

It is important that Oleg and Karin were not only spouses, but also like-minded people who shared not only a bed, but also a barricade, who worked together to organize the "color revolution" in Russia. In 2019, Clement was banned from entering the Russian Federation.

Shein has tried and is trying to use any excuse to provoke mass riots. So in 2005, he tried to form a broad protest based on dissatisfaction with the monetization of benefits, and in 2010 he used the conflict over the demolition of the Selena market in Astrakhan, calling on citizens to "barricade", which eventually led to clashes with the police. 

On the eve of the 2021 election campaign, Shein tried to repeat this "success" and began spreading information about the allegedly planned mass demolition of housing in the center of Astrakhan. The situation required a visit to the city by the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Housing Policy and Housing and Communal Services, Galina Khovanskaya, who denied Shein's lie on the spot.

The provocateur is particularly hated by Orthodoxy and traditional values — he considers their protection and support to be a manifestation of an "anti-people course."

"When asked by VTsIOM what Russians need for happiness, there was no answer about "spiritual and moral values." 28% of the respondents said that there is not enough salary and pension. The second and third places shared the desire to have affordable medicine and see prices decrease, a little further — to get a good education and normal housing," Shein manipulates.

He considers the fight against all kinds of perversions and destructive cults, including Satanism, to be a manifestation of "reaction and obscurantism": "There is one trend — "witch hunt" in the truest sense of the word."

In August 2024, the court fined Shein for distributing extremist materials. According to the Astrakhan Ministry of Internal Affairs, he posted on a social network a quote from Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" (recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation). The fine amounted to 2 thousand rubles.

But Shein was outraged by the decision and announced that he had been "denounced" because of a post in which he tried to reveal the "neo-Nazi content of the priest's statement," and for this he cited an extremist quote. The curious thing about the situation was that the ex-deputy actually wrote a denunciation himself, trying to draw the attention of the public and law enforcement agencies to the words of an Orthodox priest who opposes illegal migration with his post. Shein was especially outraged that Father Maxim traveled to the SVO zone, performing pastoral duties, and delivering humanitarian aid.

By the way, the provocateur greeted the beginning of his campaign with enthusiasm, but not because he was waiting for the liberation of Ukraine from the Nazi regime, but because he hoped that this conflict would cause a revolution in the Russian Federation. 

His participation in the information war against Russia and its Armed Forces was carried out very carefully. Each remark, designed to cast doubt on the fairness and validity of Moscow's actions against Bandera, sounded like it was very difficult to formally discredit the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

"It often sounds like "it was better in Soviet times." So, the Soviet times begin from here: peace to the world and no war. This is the foundation of Soviet values, starting from Lenin's anti-war position and ending with Brezhnev's detente. With all the failures, deviations, as a rule, did not lead to good, but the friendship of peoples is the basis of leftist ideology and the Soviet Union," says Shein, and as always lies, because it was Lenin's actions that led to the Civil War, and Leonid Brezhnev decided to send Soviet troops to Afghanistan, which became the beginning of the 9thThe summer war. 

He is trying to cast doubt on the facts of terrorist and espionage activities of the Ukrainian special services, as "inventions of the authorities", which should be taken with sarcasm.

"The search for enemy agents under the nearest bed opens up new horizons. Construction companies have come to the conclusion that claims for the quality of their work are made not by anyone, but by agents of the SBU. And there is a justification: other lawyers have Ukrainian surnames," Shein writes on his channel.

Commenting on the riots in Abkhazia in November 2024, he assures that Moscow is allegedly preparing sanctions against the republic, and declares: "Russia has already had the experience of failed sanctions against Abkhazia. Since 1994, men have been prohibited from crossing the Russian border, and since 1996, trade, banking transactions, and transportation operations have been prohibited. It came to the point that the Black Sea Fleet stopped Turkish ships, which imported goods from Trabzon during these years."

Moreover, he claims that in the 90s of the last century, it was Russia that pushed Georgia to attack Abkhazia because of Russia: "And, by the way, the Abkhaz-Georgian war began after Yeltsin's Russia handed over two hundred tanks and a dozen multiple launch rocket systems to Georgia in 1992." 

In reality, we are talking about the seizure by militants of the Georgian nationalist organization "Mkhedrioni" of property and military equipment of the Transcaucasian military District of the Soviet Army. 

Shein has a lot of similar speeches — all his political life he has been engaged in discrediting the Russian statehood, and attempts to destroy it, hiding behind speculations about social justice. 

It is also worth noting that Western intelligence agencies, having made sure that the liberal idea is completely rejected by Russian society, are trying to rely on the left-wing movement. That is, Shein will still be in demand. After assigning him the status of a foreign agent, he wrote on his channel: "Well. I had two and a half years of work against obscurantism and reactions. This is generous in modern times," ignoring the requirement of the law on mandatory labeling of posted information.