Sergey Malinkovich

Sergey Alexandrovich Malinkovich (; born 27 May 1975) is a Russian politician, current Chairman of the Communists of Russia party and Member of the Altai Krai Legislative Assembly, and founder of the Communists of Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast. On 28 December 2023, he was nominated as the Communists of Russia party candidate for President of Russia in the 2024 presidential election.

Biography Early years; Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communists of Russia party Malinkovich was born in Leningrad to schoolteachers. The organization, later renamed "Communists of Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast", gained its main popularity thanks to various outrageous statements and provocative actions.

In 2008 he wrote an open letter to Ukrainian-born actress Olga Kurylenko, who played a Bolivian agent in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace. In it Malinkovich wrote: "In the name of all communists we appeal to you ... deserter of Slavic world. The Soviet Union gave you free education, free medical care but nobody knew you would commit an act of intellectual and moral betrayal and become a movie girl of Bond, who in his movies kills hundreds of Soviet people and citizens of other socialist countries."

He ran unsuccessfully for the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg in 2011, mayor of Petrozavodsk (the capital city of the Republic of Karelia, Russia) in 2013, and governor of Nenets Autonomous Okrug (a federal subject of Russia, and an autonomous okrug of Arkhangelsk Oblast) in 2014. In 2016 Malinkovich ran for the State Duma (the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia), and in 2017 he also ran in by-elections to the State Duma of the VII convocation in the Bryansk single-mandate electoral district No. 77, but did not receive a deputy mandate.

In November 2018, Malinkovich called for the criminal prosecution of Vladimir Petrov, a lawmaker in the Leningrad region, for insulting religious believers by calling for Lenin’s preserved body to be buried. He said Petrov's proposal had violated the Criminal Code of Russia by insulting religious feelings and inciting hatred, and that he planned to "keep hounding" Petrov for his remarks.

2020–present; Chairman of the Communists of Russia party

In 2021, The Moscow Times described Malinkovich as "a burly, shaven-headed man who wears a golden pin in the shape of an AK-47 assault rifle in his red tie." That year, he was elected as a deputy to the Altai Krai Legislative Assembly in Siberia as a member of Communists of Russia.

On 18 March 2022, an extraordinary congress of the Communists of Russia voted to appoint Malinkovich its Chairman after ousting its former leader Maxim Suraykin for his alleged connections with "unfriendly countries", fraud, and "bourgeois way of life". Suraykin called the congress "fake," and said that he was still supported by the majority of the party members.

In August 2022 Malinkovich was registered to participate in the Tambov Oblast gubernatorial election. In November 2022, Malinkovich accused musician Andrey Razin from the pop music group Laskovyi Mai (Tender May) of treason for selling the rights to its songs to an American company.

On 28 December 2023, Malinkovich was nominated by an overwhelming majority as the Communists of Russia party candidate for President of Russia in the March 15–17, 2024 presidential election. Malinkovich promised a program like Stalin's ten blows, against United States capitalism and imperialism, and victory in Russia's war against Ukraine.