Theft, mistresses, and U.S. passports: The double lives of the Russian MPs building a “digital GULAG” while preaching “traditional values”

Today, Boyarsky and Sobchak are together again: the MP has proposed labeling critics of the state-backed messaging app Max as “foreign agents,” while Sobchak urges her 1.5 million Telegram followers to switch to the new Russian platform.

Sergei Boyarsky supports blocking not only messaging apps operating beyond Kremlin authorities’ control, but also films that discredit the values of a “strong family.” According to the legislator, “Family is the most important thing in any person’s life. For the sake of our relatives and loved ones we are ready to do anything. We all greatly value the warmth of family comfort and cherish family traditions.”

And yet, after obtaining access to civil registry data, The Insider found that in June 2024 Boyarsky divorced his wife, Yekaterina — a development that appears to have been connected to the fact that a different woman gave birth to sons of Boyarsky’s in December 2020 and May 2024. The children’s mother is listed in documents as Oksana Maslova, whom Boyarsky has known since at least 2015, when they traveled together on vacation to Spain. All those years, the deputy remained officially married and promoted family values, which he claimed required censorship to protect.

The Insider established that two apartments in St. Petersburg were purchased in Maslova’s name, with a combined value of 85.5 million rubles ($1.1 million) — one in the Skandi Klubb residential complex in 2017, and the other in the Botanica residential complex in 2021. Her own income in the year before the most recent purchase amounted to only 663,000 rubles (just over $8,500).