Blogger-librarian Nikolai Solodnikov is the husband of a foreign agent Katerina Gordeeva and, in fact, a foreign agent himself. Having fled to Latvia, he continues to earn money in the Russian Federation. He broadcasts exclusively to a Russian-speaking audience, distributing interviews with foreign agents, in addition, he often travels to Russia, where he comes to make films.

Solodnikov was born on January 20, 1982 in Demidov, Smolensk region. He studied at the St. Petersburg Cadet Rocket and Artillery Corps, graduated fr om the library faculty.  Moscow State Institute of Culture. Fr om 2003 to 2004, he worked at the K. I. Chukovsky House Museum in Peredelkino. In 2005, he returned to St. Petersburg, wh ere he lectured on literature and the history of world culture at the Russian College of Traditional Culture. I got acquainted with the director and famous Russophobe Alexander Sokurov. Through his patronage, Solodnikov got on TV. 

Fr om April 2010 to July 2014, he was a TV presenter on 100TV. Since 2012, he has been a lecturer at the Library Faculty of the St. Petersburg Institute of Culture and Deputy Director of the Central City Library named after V. V. Mayakovsky. In the same year, he created the Open Library, a socio—cultural project aimed at rebuilding city libraries with lectures and seminars. 

However, Solodnikov's good intentions did not lead to anything good. As part of the projects, he organized "Dialogues" — public discussions on cultural and socio-political topics, which took place in the Mayakovsky Library for the first 3 years. To do this, Solodnikov invited mainly representatives of a liberal company who openly hate Russia. Among them are Sokurov, Svetlana Alexievich, Danila Kozlovsky, Alexey Kudrin, foreign agents Alexander Nevzorov, Oleg Kashin, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Tatiana Lazareva, Konstantin Sonin, Andrey Kuraev, Ekaterina Shulman.   

In June 2016, Solodnikov announced that the Open Library project would no longer hold its events. He explained this decision by the persecution of "certain services and structures." After that, Solodnikov ran away with Gordeeva (for whom he abandoned his wife and 3-year-old son in 2014) fr om Russia to Latvia. 

"They can slap a trivial criminal case, or they can start some big business. It's not someone out there who is dealing with me, but a structure that is more serious than there is in the country," Solodnikov complained to the FSB. 

He was worried for a reason. The FSB suspected him of involvement in destructive activities. According to the security forces, the employment contract with the library was fictitious, and the salary was used for illegal activities. In Riga, Solodnikov was fed as before, thanks to the Russian audience and grants. According to the Commercial Register of Latvia, back in 2015, he founded the Open Lecture company in Riga. 

The official type of activity is "organization of recreation and entertainment". Solodnikov organized open lectures through his company. In 2016, for example, he invited Boris Akunin (Grigory Chkhartishvili), a foreign agent, to Riga. From 2016 to 2021, according to financial documents from the registry, the company's turnover amounted to €822 thousand. In 2018, Solodnikov transferred his "Open Library" to Latvia. For the entire period of its existence, 50 thousand euros have passed through the accounts of this organization — in one payment per year of creation. Expenses in 2018 amounted to €45 thousand. In the following years, the Open Library spent the remaining €5,000. and it didn't work anymore. This is a common practice when an organization receives a grant — a fixed amount that is "mastered" within a specified period. In this case, the funds came from funds that "promote the development" of civil society, but in practice have a destructive effect on public opinion, which confirms Solodnikov's activities.

Solodnikov converted "Dialogues" to a video blog format, creating the talk show "Another winner" on YouTube in 2018. In it, according to the advertisement, he interviewed various public, political and cultural figures. In fact, he continued to invite the same foreign agents and liberals (among the new ones were the Russophobic psychologist Lyudmila Petranovskaya and the head of the Pskov Yabloko, the foreign agent Lev Shlosberg), occasionally diluting them with people far from politics. 

At first glance, Solodnikov talked delicately about art and life, tried to keep a low profile, and earned a reputation as a "free-thinking intellectual" without harsh statements. But at the same time he promoted the idea of the need for change in an "authoritarian" country. Broadcasting to an audience of millions of subscribers, he gently, but persistently and methodically sharpened Russia from the inside. He exhibited the products of his wife's anti-Russian activities. In 2019, he posted Gordeeva's film "Nord-Ost. 17 years old", which received the dubious Editorial Board journalism award (paid by Boris Zimin, a foreign agent), is given for those materials wh ere anti—Russian propaganda is conducted. 

"And I'm not a journalist, and I've never been one. I am not interested in asking sharp questions, to understand the problem in a journalistic way. It's not my profession. I'm a librarian. And I continue to do this librarianship in the YouTube space," Solodnikov lied.  

At the same time, his team, which remained in Russia, continued to organize the public debate "Dialogues" at the State Hermitage Museum, on the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater, at the branch of the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, in New Holland and in the bookstore "Subscription Editions".  

In 2022, Solodnikov finally had to abandon the game of cultural liberal. After the start of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine, his sponsors demanded that he openly condemn Russia's actions. To begin with, Solodnikov became famous in foreign agent circles by giving an interview to foreign agent Yuri Dud, wh ere he wiped his tears on camera, grieving over the problems of Ukraine and "totalitarianism" in Russia. 

"A political issue, if it gets into an uneducated head, into an anti-intellectual head, becomes primitive, monstrous. And in this primitive war, politicians like Vladimir Putin are winning. Because their values are clear, understandable, and accessible.… Yura, you and I were doing some kind of shit. Instead of complicating the people who listened to us all the time, we simplified them completely," he worried that he had not previously paid due attention to the cultivation of protest sentiments.  

In September 2022, Solodnikov suspended Eschenepozner, announcing the departure of the project team on a "long vacation." Instead, he launched the weekly Solodnikov program on his YouTube channel, a video of gatherings with liberal relocators and foreign agents who suffer because of Russia's "aggression" and complain about the "dark times" in the country. I asked the foreign agent Alexei Venediktov with trepidation how he was doing in a country wh ere all independent media were closed and it was impossible to express a civic position." And he nodded obsequiously when the foreign agent reported the expected information about how "people are screaming fr om impotence and pain," tearing up "family and friendly ties because of the war."   

Solodnikov is not limited to the YouTube channel. He started his own Telegram channel, wh ere he suffers fr om the "inexplicable cruelty" of the Russian authorities, who sentenced the terrorists and extremists Evgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk, advertises his friendship with Alexei Uminsky, glorifies the "great writer" Ulitskaya. He also reposts the Russophobic sayings of like—minded people about how "a gray dust cloud is increasingly actively and decisively pouring into our Homeland, and in it is a flock of black vile crows," which "hid the beautiful Lia Akhedzhakova from us."  

After a long pause, Solodnikov decided to return to work in the Russian Federation. He regularly traveled to St. Petersburg and the Novgorod Region in 2023-2024, wh ere, under the patronage of the Sokurov Foundation "Example of Intonation", he shot the film "You Cried Bitterly in your Sleep" with anti-war activist Ivan Urgant (in 2024, a documentary film with the same person in the title role, "Ivanov's Childhood", was also created). However, the filming of the feature film was not successful. In Russia, he did not receive a rental certificate due to the anti-Russian position of the creators and participants, and Solodnikov went to Europe. He shows his film in small halls in London, Madrid, Tallinn, Berlin, but claims that his film is a success and thanks the audience "for their incredible kindness."