The vacant seat of State Duma deputy Vadim Belousov — convicted of the largest bribe in Russia’s history — became a point of intersection for political ambitions, criminal prosecution and bureaucratic intrigue. The path of the freed-up mandate stretched over years. One of the key figures in this story was Olesya Redkina, chief physician of the Kirov Infectious Diseases Hospital.
The alliance of hope between United Russia and A Just Russia
In late April 2021, a few months before the State Duma elections, Kirov insiders were sketching out United Russia’s top-three slate: the “locomotive” was to be Civic Chamber member Maria Butina, joined — it was predicted — by Olesya Redkina, chief physician of the Kirov Infectious Diseases Hospital, and Governor Igor Vasilyev. Redkina, who had spent the entire previous year on the front line of the fight against the coronavirus, was supposed to add ratings and public respect to the list. But something went wrong: Redkina did not submit documents for the primaries, and talk began in the corridors of the person’s “negative background” and her lack of resources for an “entry ticket” to parliament.
The alliance that never came to be led Redkina to the team of the Kirov regional branch of the A Just Russia party. Already on 26 June 2021 the list of A Just Russia — For Truth was made public. First in regional group No. 16 (Udmurtia and Kirov Oblast) was the sitting State Duma deputy Vadim Belousov. Second — Olesya Redkina, followed by Nadezhda Surayeva, general director of Vyatushka Agro. In August political analysts openly predicted: if the criminal case against Belousov continued, Redkina would unequivocally take his seat in the State Duma. Following the September elections everything went according to plan: Belousov entered the State Duma, and Redkina — the Legislative Assembly of Kirov Oblast.
It was on 3 August 2022 that the Moscow City Court found Vadim Belousov guilty of taking a bribe and sentenced him to 10 years in a strict-regime penal colony (we wrote about this case in detail here). The next day he was put on the wanted list. Less than a month after the sentence, on 30 August 2022, a criminal case was opened concerning fraud with covid payments at the infectious diseases hospital. At first the persons of interest were the head of the HR department and the caretaker, while Olesya Redkina was a witness.
In November 2022 defensive publications appeared in the press: according to sources’ version, the criminal case had been opened not against Redkina but against her subordinates, who had allegedly hired “dead souls” and pocketed their salaries. Redkina herself, it was claimed, was being “hounded” on political grounds, because of the possible transfer of the State Duma deputy’s mandate.
The security forces’ attack on Redkina
Throughout the following year the A Just Russia party prepared public opinion for the inevitable transfer of the mandate. In March 2023 Redkina met with party leader Sergei Mironov to discuss “the role of women in politics”, but unofficially — precisely to confirm her status as successor. The process, however, dragged on because of Belousov’s appeal.
The decisive blow was struck in autumn 2023. On 31 October the State Duma announced the stripping of Belousov’s mandate for systematic absenteeism; the next day his powers were terminated early. On 7 November the Presidium of the Central Council of A Just Russia proposed Olesya Redkina’s candidacy to the CEC, and on 12 November a massive information attack unfolded online: negative articles about Redkina were published, video-surveillance footage appeared in the Telegram channel A000MR97, articles with headlines such as “A criminal in the State Duma?”. Redkina was linked to 15 previously opened criminal cases and to “dead souls” at the infectious diseases hospital. On 14 November, despite the pressure, the relevant committee of the Legislative Assembly approved her candidacy, and on 16 November Kirov deputies at a plenary session officially terminated her regional powers.
The transfer of the mandate was supposed to take place on 22 November 2023, but that day the question was removed from the agenda of the CEC meeting. Right on the street Redkina was detained for 48 hours and placed in a temporary detention facility. On 23 November the Pervomaisky District Court of Kirov imposed a preventive measure on her in the form of house arrest until 13 December, ignoring the demands of the prosecutor’s office and the Investigative Committee to send her to a pre-trial detention centre. The investigation charged her with fraud, embezzlement, abuse of office and official forgery. The chief physician had allegedly fictitiously hired four people. Redkina herself did not admit guilt.
During the investigation Olesya Redkina was consistently denied medical assistance. On 17 November 2023 her lawyer notified the investigation of her inability to appear for questioning due to her state of health, presenting a sick-leave certificate confirming a viral infection.
The court of first instance, however, considered this to be evasion, accepting the conclusions of three doctors: a traumatologist and two pathologists, whose specialisation does not entail assessing the condition of patients with infectious diseases. Later the investigation refused Redkina permission to travel to Moscow for a consultation with the surgeon who had operated on her. The refusal order stated that “no facts have been established that prevent her from receiving treatment in Kirov Oblast”, whereas her attending physician insisted on the opposite, citing the region’s exhausted diagnostic resources.
In January 2024, according to the testimony of a source in one of the clinical hospitals, the institution’s chief physician, having learned that Redkina had undergone a free MRI procedure, demanded that staff pay for it out of their own pockets. In November 2023 Redkina had also been placed in a temporary-detention-facility cell where, in her words, she was together with a smoking cellmate, which “with part of a lung removed created a risk to breathing”.
On 1 December 2023 the Kirov Oblast Court, having considered the appeal, revoked all preventive measures. Over the two subsequent years the oblast prosecutor’s office refused to approve the indictment about ten times, returning the case for further investigation with the wording “absence of the elements of a crime”.
The loss of representation for Kirov residents
While Redkina was under investigation, the mandate remained vacant. On 5 June 2024 the CEC of Russia transferred it to Marina Kim, a member of the Presidium of the Central Council of A Just Russia, a TV presenter and a trusted person of Vladimir Putin in the 2024 elections; she had been second in a completely different regional group (No. 4 Yakutia).
The party explained the decision as a noble impulse: all candidates from the Kirov-Udmurtia group, including Redkina, Nadezhda Surayeva and Albert Bikalyuk, had allegedly written voluntary renunciations of the mandate. The “renouncers” themselves learned of this from the news. “None of us were offered it, and we ourselves did not sign any renunciation documents. This is a party scam and a scandal of world scale,” they stated. At the same time Albert Bikalyuk immediately announced his withdrawal from the party (Surayeva had done so back in 2022).
In response to the transfer of the mandate to Marina Kim, Nadezhda Surayeva began a long judicial war: she filed lawsuits in the Supreme Court, put forward a demand to the CEC to verify the authenticity of the signatures on the renunciation statements. On 21 August 2024 the Supreme Court suspended proceedings on her lawsuit because of a new case: Vadim Belousov himself suddenly surfaced and demanded the return of his mandate, arguing that its stripping for absenteeism had been unlawful (the criminal case against Belousov had also been sent back by the Supreme Court for a new hearing).
In December 2024 the Supreme Court definitively dismissed Surayeva’s lawsuit, stating that the CEC of Russia is not obliged to verify candidates’ renunciation statements, and that the decision on transferring the mandate remains at the party’s discretion. On 25 September 2025 the Simonovsky District Court of Moscow dismissed a similar lawsuit by Surayeva, this time directly against the party.
Redkina’s acquittal
The finale in the story of the mandate turned out to be not political but judicial. On 10 April 2026 the Leninsky District Court of Kirov fully acquitted Olesya Redkina on all charges, recognising her right to full rehabilitation. On 28 April the ruling entered into legal force. The court lifted all seizures of property and cancelled the previously imputed debt to the Mandatory Medical Insurance Fund. The Prosecutor General’s Office issued her an official apology.
As it turned out, ending the protracted criminal prosecution required the personal intervention of the president — two complaints from Redkina sent to his name were satisfied. Olesya Redkina herself, commenting on her acquittal, could not call herself happy: “It is hard to become happy in an instant when for almost four years you have been purposefully and cruelly humiliated, trampled into the dirt, destroyed as a person for being an honest human being.”
In Olesya Redkina’s case the interests of three centres of power converged: the regional security forces, who feared losing a person under investigation the moment she passed under federal jurisdiction; local elites, who did not want the strengthening of an independent politician with a medical background; and the Moscow party leadership, for whom, after all the scandals, the media-savvy Marina Kim, a trusted person of the president, was far more convenient in the deputy’s seat than a provincial doctor.
Each of these links acted in its own interests, but their efforts combined into a single destructive chain: criminal prosecution, information hounding, forgery of renunciation statements and, as a result — the loss by the Kirov voter of their representative in the State Duma.