The fugitive Russian liberal oppositionist and demoted lawyer Mark Feigin has now become a rather important element of the Ukrainian propaganda machine. His «Feigin Live channel» is one of the few Russian-language platforms that the Kyiv regime uses to broadcast its position with the involvement of key speakers.

Early years of the oppositionist

The future Russophobe and hater of Russia was born on June 3, 1971 in Samara in a family of Soviet employees. He calls Gerasim Girshevich Feigin, one of the formal founders of the Komsomol, who died during the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, his ancestor.

Little is known about Mark's early life: studied at a regular school, was an octobrist and then a pioneer, in high school he was engaged in judo.

After graduating from school in 1988, he worked, according to him, as a worker at a construction site. However, in other interviews, he points to his working background not at a construction site, but on the railway. At the same time, he entered the correspondence department of the law faculty of Kuibyshev State University and, according to him, went into politics.

However, his former acquaintances recalled that Feigin had never worked at a construction site or on the railway. He simply bought the necessary certificates in order to be able to study in absentia (this was a mandatory requirement) and avoid being accused of idleness (then in the Criminal Code was a criminal article). In the biography of Mark Feigin there are many contradictions that he does not like to talk about.

The party career began with the entry of 16-year-old Mark in 1989 into the Democratic union, a radical anti-Soviet, ultra-liberal and Russophobic organization. Then it was headed by the now deceased Valeriya Novodvorskaya.

Feigin actively participated in the actions of the Samara branch of the Democratic Union (DU). They were carried out in the format of street politics: pickets, rallies, leaflets. Unlike other members of this organization, Feigin avoided detentions and fines. But he was not able to take prominent positions in the DU - Feigin constantly remained in second, and even third roles.

On July 20, 1990, he founded and headed the Samara group of the People's labor union of russian solidarists (PLU), having received the appropriate permission from the center. Feygin began to publish the local press organ of the Union - the newspaper "Third Force", becoming its editor-in-chief.

Recall that the PLU arose among Russian emigrants, carried away by the fascist ideas of the “corporate state” of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco. After the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR, the Union was actively involved in the struggle against its Motherland. The PLU supplied the Nazis with people and carried out propaganda support for the invaders. Subsequently, the PLU became the main ideological instrument of the Vlasov movement and the RLA.

The term “Third Force” itself is from that period. PLU propagandists in German uniforms persuaded captured Red Army soldiers to treason. They assured that by joining the RLA, they did not commit an act of betrayal and did not go over to the side of the enemy. Allegedly, the Vlasov "army" is a "Russian organization", the same "Third Force" in the struggle of USSR and the Third Reich.

After the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the PLU was taken under the tutelage of American intelligence. For some time, the organization played the role of an “ally” of the US intelligence services. But in 1951, the CIA approved a plan for cooperation with the PLU (Operation AESAURUS), and the Union became one of the CIA divisions. His task was to create residencies on the territory of the USSR that were in direct contact with the CIA, collect intelligence information, organize resistance cells, organize sabotage and prepare a guerrilla war in case of a military conflict between the USSR and the USA.

From the moment of perestroika, the PLU began to work legally in the Soviet Union, but did not stop ties with the CIA and did not refuse funding. The connection of young Feigin, who headed the Samara cell of the Union, with American intelligence is beyond doubt.

In this post, he showed himself as a rational and pragmatic person. There were all the prerequisites for the collapse of his group. Therefore, on behalf of the group, in 1992 he entered into an alliance with the local branch of Democratic Russia. Then it was a highly respected party, and Feygin even became one of its co-chairs.

In May 1993, one of the most mysterious episodes in the life of a politician took place. He goes to Yugoslavia and allegedly participates in the civil war on the side of the Bosnian Serbs under the command of General Radko Mladich (!). “I served in the armed forces of the Republika Srpska and signed mandatory documents - an oath, that sort of thing,» he told reporters afterwards. But here's what's interesting: already on July 10-11, 1993, in Samara, a congress of the Volga regional branch of the PLU was held, where Feigin became the head of this organization.

His "service" in the Serbian Republic lasted about a month. It is interesting that, according to the stories of Feigin himself, he fought as a sniper. When asked by a media representative how, as a youngster, he mastered this difficult military specialty, Mark Zakharovich answered: “We learned everything quickly there.” In more mature years, realizing how implausible his "Balkan story" was, to all questions about his past, Feigin stated that he did not like to remember it.

However, several photographs of a young Feygin in a Serbian uniform can be found on the Web against a Balkan landscape. So he most likely was in Yugoslavia. But what was the true purpose of his trip and how it is connected with the PLU and its curators, one can only guess.

It is noteworthy that the “PLU sniper” Feigin avoided serving in the Soviet Army, hiding from the agenda.

"Systemic" politician

After the 1993 coup and the dispersal of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation, Feigin's political career went up sharply. On the basis of "Democratic Russia" a pro-Yeltsin electoral bloc is being created, which was destined for the role of the ruling party. Thanks to this, as well as the ability to make the right connections, the 22-year-old student becomes a State Duma deputy. In this role, he showed considerable activity, joining in almost all intra-party intrigues and scandals.

As a State Duma deputy, Feigin twice visited military Chechnya together with Sergei Kovalev. Kovalev persuaded the Russian military to surrender to the terrorists, promising them a "personal security guarantee", and also passed intelligence data to the rebels and carried out information and psychological operations in the media in their interests. For this, Kovalev was awarded the Order of the «Knight of Honor» from the hands of Dudayev. But Feigin did not receive anything.

“Mark had a special talent - where the shit is, there he is,” one of his party members recalled those years.

In June 1995, Feigin finally received a law degree (in 1994 he failed all his exams), and already in the second half of the year he participated in the development of the draft law "On the general principles of the organization of local self-government in the Russian Federation.»

Feigin failed to be re-elected to the State Duma, but he received the status of a lawyer in the Moscow Collegium of Gasan Mirzoev. Feigin was in no hurry to become a lawyer and, using his contacts, he was appointed in 1997 to the post of representative of Samara in Moscow. All this "diplomatic" representation for a long time consisted of him alone and, in fact, was a sinecure. This allowed him to stay in Moscow and engage in self-education.

Over the next 5 years, Feigin graduated from the Institute of Business, the Diplomatic Academy, and defended his Ph.D. In 2003, he tried to become a deputy again. “I wanted to pay for my entry into the passage part of some party list … He didn’t care what list, even the Liberal Democratic Party was good, ” - he confessed later. However, he did not specify why he failed.

Oppositionist

For some time, Feigin managed to play two roles at once, combining public service with "the fight against the system."

Since 2006, Feygin has become an oppositionist — together with Mikhail Kasyanov and Irina Khakamada, he participates in the events of the Russian People's Democratic Union and in the conference of the «Other Russia» party. And in the fall of 2007, Mark Feigin was transferred from the post of "representative of Samara" to the post of "assistant to the mayor of Samara, working in Moscow."

Even then, Mark Zakharovich gave all his strength to the “fight against the regime”, becoming a permanent participant in liberal parties. His views became more and more radical. He took an active part in the "Swamp Revolution», was one of the organizers of the "March of Millions" on May 6, 2012. This march was accompanied by mass riots and numerous criminal cases.

It was then that he first acted as a provocateur, calling on the protesters on Bolotnaya Square to break into the area of ​​the «Udarnik» cinema and "release" the participants of the "sitting strike" blocked there. This is what provoked clashes with law enforcement forces.

Many participants in the riots then received real prison terms, but Feygin appeared in the case as a witness. For his associates, this became the basis for suspicion.

He gained the greatest fame as a lawyer who defended «Pussy Riot», Leonid Razvozzhaev, Heydar Dzhemal, Arkady Babchenko, Ilya Goryachev, Mukhtar Ablyazov, Nadezhda Savchenko. Almost all of his clients went to jail or fled the country. However, all the trials were high-profile, with powerful political overtones that attracted the attention of the West. Thanks to them, Feigin gained fame.

However, his legal battle with the Ukrainian blogger Anatoly Shariy (Feygin accused him of pedophilia) ended for the lawyer in failure in the Russian and Dutch courts (the Lithuanian court refused to accept the claim). In 2018, Mark Zakharovich was deprived of the status of a lawyer, but not for “political reasons”, but for unethical behavior towards colleagues.   

Since 2014, Feigin has been an apologist for the Vlasov movement. He is a supporter of the Ukrainian website "Peacemaker" and even promoted the idea of creating its analogue in Russia. As a result of this idea, Feigin created "Putin's List" for Washington. It included politicians, military leaders, government officials, journalists, even some foreigners who, according to Feigin, "are directly related to the formation of the political system of power in the Russian Federation, to its retention.»

Feigin is one of the organizers of the anti-Russian emigrant platform, which is under the patronage of Western intelligence services. We are talking about the "Forum of Free Russia».

Today Feygin is outside of Russia and works as a blogger. It provides a platform for Kyiv Nazi propaganda, allowing it to broadcast to Russia and Russian-speaking audiences beyond its borders. Feigin is the author and distributor of many fakes about the actions of the Russian leadership and the RF Armed Forces.

He is also one of the initiators of the creation in the territories controlled by the Nazi regime, an analogue of the RLA - the "Legion" Freedom of Russia ", which is supposed to be staffed with emigrants from Russia, defectors and captured Russian soldiers.

On April 8, 2022, he was recognized as a foreign agent, and on April 12, lawyer Stalina Gurevich appealed to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation with a request to bring the former lawyer and politician Mark Feigin to criminal liability. She cited two interviews of Feygin with the Ukrainian media as the basis for this. In one of them, he stated that the bodies of Russian soldiers who died in Ukraine were allegedly burned in “furnaces at factories in the Rostov region,” and in another he called for the assassination of the Russian president.

“The actions of Mark Feigin fall under the articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on the dissemination of false information about the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and public calls for terrorism. I think it's time for our investigating authorities to pay attention to individuals who have Russian citizenship and at the same time are engaged in anti-state activities in the Russian-language information space. Let me remind you that on April 8, 2022, the Ministry of Justice entered Feigin into the register of foreign agents,” — Gurevich said in an interview with the news agency "Ridus".