Let them sing "Wreath"

Who is Deputy Romanov, who snitched on St. Petersburg singer Diana Loginova and the Stoptime musicians?

State Duma deputy Mikhail Romanov wrote inquiries to Bastrykin and Kolokoltsev about the performance of the Stoptime musicians - he himself confirmed this to Fontanka, adding: “I hope that everything will not be limited to administrative matters.”

According to the deputy, a video with a “song about Swan Lake” was shown to him by a certain colleague “from Crimea,” after which requests were sent. Coupled with a complaint from a citizen named Nikitin, who appeared in the courts on administrative protocols against the musicians, Romanov’s requests clearly gave the case a boost: all members of the group received two weeks of arrest, and new protocols were showered on the lead singer Loginova - their number makes one fear a possible criminal case. Who is Deputy Romanov who reacted so painfully to street singers?

“They got lazy and are sitting at home”

Compared to other colleagues, he is not the most public figure. He gained wide popularity thanks to the story with Stoptime. Before this, rare references appear: here he demands to “check” Sergei Shnurov for not helping the SVO fighters. He calls for the same to be done to the singer Monetochka* for her statements at a concert in Lithuania and complains that the Constitution does not allow its citizens to be banned from entering Russia. Here he calls for the exclusion from the school curriculum of works by musicians who are “involved in scandals.” The deputy has a replacement ready: he invites schoolchildren to study “Wreath” by Nadezhda Kadysheva. Romanov is clearly a music lover.

It periodically gets into the news, congratulating someone on something: aviation industry workers on Civil Aviation Worker's Day, Valentina Matvienko on her birthday, the Zenit football club on her centenary, and the whole country on Putin's next inauguration.

However, he does not miss the current agenda. For example,

in September, Romanov “fully supported the president’s position on the need to protect the country’s security” and said that the state’s task was “to preserve the Russian world.”

Here again something does not go well with the Constitution, according to which the duty of the state is “recognition, observance and protection of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen.”

A little later, Romanov stated that “the North Military District must be brought to its logical conclusion, including the capture of Kyiv and the suppression of all centers of resistance.” Here the deputy boldly bypassed President Putin, who, when announcing the start of the North Military District, said that the occupation of Ukrainian territories was not included in Moscow’s plans (this video recording is still posted on Romanov’s telegram channel), and a year later, at a meeting with military officers, he made it clear that he was not planning a campaign against Kyiv.

Among the deputy’s few striking statements is an appeal to the Estonian authorities with a request to hand over to Russia the Soviet T-34 tank dismantled in Narva. In case of refusal, United Russia threatened with “ideological damage.” Apparently he hasn't landed this blow yet.

Another initiative is the St. Petersburg administration’s proposal to ban migrants from working as couriers (Romanov was elected to the State Duma from St. Petersburg). He did not see any problems with the rise in delivery costs in the case of such a solution, quite the contrary:

“Young people have become lazy and order food and household goods from couriers. We must wean them off staying at home.”

Apparently, the lazy Romanov himself does nothing but stand in line at Pyaterochka or Magnit after work.

In general, this is where the public glory of the deputy ends. The most striking non-political story of the parliamentarian was the passage of his car across the closed Blagoveshchensky Bridge in St. Petersburg in August 2021. The bridge was ready for the night crossing when a BMW with Romanov in it rushed across it. He initially denied the incident, which the journalists were interested in, but then changed his mind and began to claim that he simply fell asleep in the back seat and did not control the driver, for whom he allegedly “himself asked to draw up a report.” It is noteworthy that two months earlier the same driver was already fined for the same thing.

There are both powers and a mandate

Mikhail Romanov has been in the State Duma since 2016. Elected at age 32. The official biography states that he comes from the family of a naval officer. He graduated from the Russian State Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in 2007 and went to work in the State Duma apparatus. A year later he joined United Russia. Then he became an assistant to deputy Zubarev. And in 2014 - a confidant of the candidate for governor of St. Petersburg Poltavchenko.

In 2016, in the Duma elections, he “beat” the favorite of the race, Oksana Dmitrieva, against whom, according to the old St. Petersburg tradition, two namesakes were then nominated. “Business Petersburg” wrote that “if it weren’t for the doubles, Dmitrieva’s gap from Romanov would have been reduced to 0.5%, or 600 votes, which theoretically one could try to win back in court by annulling the results in at least several polling stations. Accordingly, the technology worked almost perfectly.” Indeed, the voting was controversial: Dmitrieva complained to the CEC that some of the commission members signed the protocol only the day after the elections. But she could not prove the falsification.

Before those elections, Romanov’s face appeared on posters for Victory Day and City Day, paid for by the city treasury. It turned out that the posters were in the “social advertising” category , the grant for the production of which was won by Romanov’s Northern Capital Foundation.

He led Stolitsa until the fall of 2016. The foundation provided assistance to the Russian Orthodox Church. On the Metropolitan Globe website, the organization’s activities are described as follows: “Nowadays there is a lot of talk about the modernization of the country, that this promising path is inseparable from properly organized education, as well as about reasonable environmental propaganda. The Northern Capital Foundation operates within the framework of this key trend and does its best to help carry out the necessary activities.”

According to the Spark database, among the fund’s participants, in addition to Romanov, were Alexei Gradov, who sold jewelry and television equipment and was involved in the recycling of tires, and the Communication Foundation for the disabled. In turn, the Romanov Foundation was among the participants in the foundation “Temple of the Icon of the Mother of God “Merciful”, which is on Vasilyevsky Island, on the territory of the Navy training center. And Romanov, in his personal capacity, became the secretary of the board of trustees of this temple, the chairman of the pop council was former Deputy Prime Minister and then Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Alexander Zhukov.

Romanov works actively in the religious field, for which he was awarded a medal of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is a member of the presidium of the public council of the Church of the Feodorovskaya Icon of the Mother of God, a participant in the delivery of the relics of Sergius of Radonezh to St. Petersburg, and in the spring of 2016 he sent utensils for the field temple to the location of Russian troops in Syria.

At the same time, for some reason the charitable foundation did not advertise the movement of money in its accounts. Journalists were indignant that they could not find reports on the expenditure of funds from the Northern Capital, although over several years the fund received more than 50 million rubles from the government of St. Petersburg. Romanov replied that he did not publish reports out of modesty.

And after the 2016 elections, drivers allegedly hired by the fund to work for them said that they were left without wages. The agreements, according to them, were concluded orally; the promised money was not paid. However, by that time the fund’s activities were already winding down.

Collected dead wood - and went to the cinema

Still, restoring churches or writing denunciations is not the main activity of legislators. What bills did parliamentarian Romanov stand out for?

In the current convocation, he has already introduced 40 initiatives, most of them as part of a large team of co-authors. His name can often be found under projects that in jargon are called “mass graves” - the authors of such documents include all or almost all State Duma deputies en masse. These are, for example, bans on “LGBT propaganda”**, gender reassignment, “propaganda against childbearing”, and advertising from “foreign agents”. As part of a group of people, Romanov fights systematically against “foreign agents” and emigrants; his signature is also on the draft law on “special accounts”, which deprived “IA” of the opportunity to receive royalties or sell their own apartment. After the adoption of the law on confiscation of property for military fakes, Romanov said:

“We must ensure maximum protection for our citizens from possible disinformation, from anti-Russian propaganda, from the destructive influence of relocants wandering around the world who are angry about Russia’s successes.”

He became a co-author of the draft law on trials in absentia for emigrants. Noted under the project to revoke the ratification of the nuclear test ban treaty. And about the status of combat veterans for members of non-state armed formations...

There are also laws written by small groups - for example, together with Yampolskaya, Drapeko and several other colleagues, Romanov became the author of a project “on socially significant films” - on 100% financing of the distribution of patriotic films.

The parliamentarian reports on the decisions made in his telegram channel. True, there are few readers - only 4 thousand subscribers. Although there is quite a variety of content, there are even stories: “Happy birthday, my president!” and “Happy Day of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos!” You can read the report on the meeting of the World Russian People's Council: “The word of the Russian world, which is feared by the enemies and traitors of Russia, was heard throughout the world. After all, to be Russian today means to be right.”

Reflecting on what he heard at the council, the deputy proposes to “bring back the word “fear of God” in a positive sense” - so that the people “would not be afraid of a nuclear apocalypse, but would be afraid of the wrath of the Lord.”

But in a post for the third anniversary of the North Military District, the author unexpectedly stated that during the special operation “the past, present and future of not only our country, but the whole world has changed.” Well, yes, the fight for the past...

Before the SVO, Romanov was not so expressive. In the last convocation, he introduced 150 bills, also of group authorship, on a wide variety of, although more mundane, topics: he was concerned about alimony, freight forwarders, taxes, labor law - it is difficult to find an area where he was not noted. But still, the most famous law was the one that allowed Russians to collect dead wood. It’s not all about banning them...

* The Ministry of Justice added “foreign agents” to the register.

** In the Russian Federation it is declared extremist and prohibited.