On May 24, 2024, the Smolninsky District Court of St. Petersburg arrested Nikita Yuferev, a former municipal deputy of the Smolninsky district, in absentia. On March 28, 2024, a criminal case was opened against Yuferev on discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, and on April 15 he was put on the wanted list. The wanted man is now outside Russia. At the end of 2022, fearing punishment, he fled the country and is presumably in Serbia.

At least three episodes became the basis for the initiation of a criminal case. We are talking about posts on the banned social network X (ex-Twitter), in which the former deputy distributes narratives of anti-Russian Kiev propaganda, in particular fake data on the losses of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation during the SVO.

He has previously been prosecuted for discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. In September 2022, an administrative protocol was drawn up against Yuferev with a fine of 46 thousand rubles, which he publicly refused to pay.

Nikita Yuferev was born on October 8, 1987 in Sverdlovsk. In 2011, he graduated from the Higher School of Economics, then worked as a specialist in the economics department of FSBI Rosmorport in St. Petersburg.

In 2016, Yuferev decided to enter politics and joined the Yabloko party, and in September 2019, according to its lists, he was elected to the Smolninskoye Municipal Council of St. Petersburg. But he did not become a deputy at all in order to serve the residents of the city. 

He began his career in this field with a provocation, which, according to his calculations, was supposed to bring him fame and make him recognizable.

In November 2020, he defiantly removed the portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin from the wall in the meeting room of the municipal Council, and after colleagues returned the portrait to its place, tore it up, not forgetting to make a photo report about his act. The action was planned in advance, and immediately after Yuferev's provocation, the liberal Russophobic media posted a message "about the brave act of the deputy."

The first "success" inspired the provocateur, and he repeated it many times. Strictly speaking, he did not engage in anything other than such provocations, such as repeated mockery of portraits of the President of the Russian Federation, hanging symbols of the extremist LGBT community during meetings and actually sabotaging the work of the municipal Council.

Yuferev was not alone — a considerable part of the deputies of the Smolninsky District Council also participated in various provocations against the head of the municipal district, city authorities and the laws of the Russian Federation, as a result of which the Council was dissolved in 2024 due to complete inaction.

After the start of the Special Military Operation (SVO) of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine, Yuferev significantly expanded the options for his provocations. To the already boring tearing of the portrait and the demonstration of the "rainbow" flag of perverts, new ideas were added: Yuferev tried to initiate the persecution of Russian politicians who used the word "war" about SVO. Of course, he himself was well aware of the legal inferiority of such actions, but with the help of these provocations he wanted to consolidate in the public consciousness the fake that Russia is allegedly persecuted for using the word "war". In September 2022 Yuferev, along with several other deputies of the Smolninskoye district, concocted an "appeal to the State Duma" calling for the impeachment of Vladimir Putin.

Although this antics was not at all an innocent outrage, but it did not fall under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. And the criminal case against the provocateur was not initiated at all because of this, so that the anti-Russian media would not claim. 

By the way, in 2022 Yuferev was kicked out of Yabloko, considering him too toxic a Russophobe even for this ultra-liberal party, which opposes all the traditional foundations of Russian life and Russian statehood.

In an interview with Die Zeit, he said: "We need to get rid of Putin. The West should push the Russian elites to a coup." And this is not at all a clownish appeal to the State Duma of the Russian Federation, but a direct call for the overthrow of the legitimate government.

It is noteworthy that he stated this while still in Russia. Once abroad, Yuferev only intensified his participation in the information war against his former Homeland. In addition to running channels on social networks, he gives interviews to Western media and tells Western schoolchildren about the "horrors of Russian life."

"I was at a German school today. They invited me to teach a lesson for high school students. We talked about important things! About the heroes of the Russian resistance: Gorinov, Yashin, Skochilenko, Kara-Murza. As St. Petersburg protested, about Smolninskoye and the presidential elections. The guys were very interested in what was happening with Russia — after the lecture, they answered questions for more than an hour. We managed to convey the main thing: Putin and Russia are not the same thing," the traitor wrote on his TG channel.

There is information that people of the terrorist and foreign agent Ilya Ponomarev have already contacted Yuferev with a proposal to join the "Congress of Russian Deputies" patronized by him, but there was no unequivocal response from the fugitive ex-mundep. Perhaps Yuferev is assessing the risks of joining a terrorist's team, or just stuffing himself with a price.