Time to read: 14 minutes(s)

From real estate agent to political prisoner: Why are security forces persecuting Ufa journalist Olga Komleva?

Olga Komleva came to journalism through activism. A close associate of Lilia Chanysheva and a former volunteer for Navalny's campaign, she remained largely unnoticed by opposition politicians for quite some time, known only within activist circles and mentioned in the media in connection with house searches. Then Chanysheva was detained, and Olga began actively attending and covering court proceedings.

They came for Komleva on March 27. The next day, she was sent to pretrial detention for two months, until May 27. NeMoskva explains why the authorities are upset with Olga and why they decided to lock her away.

Olga Komleva is not a native of Ufa; she was born in 1979 in the city of Usman in the Lipetsk region. Almost immediately after her birth, her family moved to Ishimbay, the hometown of Olga's mother, Venera Minibaevna, a member of the Zagidullin family. 

Olga said that her maternal grandmother was the daughter of Nury Zagidullina, the first organizer of the collective farm in Isheevo (a village in the Ishimbaysky District of Bashkortostan). Olga's great-grandfather participated in preparing the documents for the transfer of land from the Shakhtau shihan to the Sterlitamak soda plant.

When Shakhtau was almost completely destroyed and the issue of raw materials for the Bashkir Soda Company (JSC Bashkir Soda Company) became acute, the descendants of Nuriy Zagidullin actively defended the Toratau and Kushtau shikhans from development.

In 1995, after graduating from high school, Olga Komleva moved to Ufa, where she enrolled in the Ufa Technological Institute of Service (UTIS). In her fifth year, she began working in real estate: initially, she worked on commercial properties as an assistant to a bankruptcy trustee, then joined an agency. In 2003, she registered as an individual entrepreneur, and in 2016, she qualified as a cadastral engineer.

«"Olga has always been passionate about what's happening. Despite censorship and persecution, the authorities couldn't force her to stop fighting and remain silent," Fyodor Telin, a former lawyer for Navalny's Ufa headquarters (currently in exile), described Olga Komleva's tenacity. "Her [criminal] prosecution has no connection to the law. Sooner or later, the accusers themselves will end up in the dock."

Judging by Olga's Facebook posts, she began defending people's rights while still a realtor.

For example, in June 2017, Komleva expressed outrage at errors in cadastral data that became possible due to the discrepancy between legislation and reality:

"Gentlemen in power, anyone interested in order in the land sector, let's start fixing the mess in the cadastral register in Ufa. Bashkortostan is the leader in Russia in terms of the completeness of its real estate cadastre, and it has the best-established cooperation in this area. And here lives one of those concerned people—me—who writes you tons of complaints, and you don't respond."

Olga became a supporter of Alexei Navalny from the moment she first encountered his posts on LiveJournal. Her husband, Vyacheslav, recommended she read the blog of the then-rising politician. However, until the opening of the opposition leader's headquarters in Ufa, Olga remained outside of activism, merely closely following political affairs, from Yukos to the present day.

"Overall, it was clear to me that everything was heading in a bad direction. As soon as Putin came to power, this chain of continuous deterioration began: the Second Chechen War, the sinking of the Kursk, the destruction of NTV, Beslan, Georgia, Ukraine...," Komleva told an Idel.Realii journalist in August 2023.

Olga attended the opening of Navalny's Ufa headquarters on March 4, 2017, with her husband. They weren't able to meet Alexey due to the large number of guests. They only listened to speeches by Alexey himself, his ally Leonid Volkov, and the head of the regional headquarters, Lilia Chanysheva. The Komlevs left their phone number and left. But they didn't go unnoticed.

"The first time I saw Olga and her husband was at the headquarters opening," Fyodor Telin told NeMoskva. "I was working as security at the entrance to the building. That day, the idiots from NOD pelted Alexei with eggs at the train station and staged other provocations, so such measures were necessary."

Olga Komleva's acquaintances notice an interesting feature in their communication with her: she addresses everyone as "you."

"As far as I know, even within the Komlev family, they prefer this form of communication," Telin commented. "We didn't get to meet at the headquarters opening, but we interacted a lot after that: at numerous campaign pickets, newspaper distributions, lectures, and other events. We celebrated various holidays together several times. I didn't agree with her on everything, especially in terms of communication, but she has always been and remains consistent in her actions."

Soon after Navalny's visit to Ufa, Liliya called Olga herself—she was looking for volunteers to distribute leaflets at a picket. That picket was Olga's first political action. She later admitted that she was terrified of police resistance. But everything worked out, and she never felt that way again, even when she knew she would be detained. There were countless rallies and pickets in Ufa afterward, and Navalny's campaign volunteers attended almost all of them. Except, perhaps, for those times when Komleva was detained before the protests even began, preemptively.

Olga was first brought to the police station in January 2018 in connection with the "Voters' Strike." Liliya Chanysheva was detained on the eve of the rally, and Komleva and approximately 30 participants were detained at the start of the unsanctioned protest. Just two weeks later, the court issued Olga her first fine—10 rubles. That fall, Komleva received another fine—an unprecedented (at least for Bashkortostan) 75 rubles—for participating in a protest against pension reform.

"After the 'He's Not Our Tsar' rally [in May 2018], Lilia Chanysheva and I were sent to a special detention center for organizing it," recalled Fyodor Telin. "It was a new thing in Ufa at the time, and many people were outraged by the court's decision. And Olga held two pickets demanding our release. This kind of support really works; it was very gratifying to learn about it, and then to see the photos."

In the summer of 2019, there was a picket against the denial of candidates to the Moscow City Duma. In the fall, a criminal case was opened against the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and searches were conducted—both at its headquarters and at the homes of its employees and activists, including the Komlevs. Initially, they confiscated their electronics, leaving only a cell phone and an old computer that contained no information of interest to the security forces. A little later, they arrested and froze their bank accounts.

Olga's activism wasn't limited to pickets and rallies. In 2019, she tried to have the "public" hearings on the budget for the upcoming three-year period declared illegal in court. At those hearings, Lilia Chanysheva was prevented from finishing her critical speech—she was literally dragged out of the room where regional parliamentarians were meeting. The court dismissed Komleva's lawsuit against the State Assembly of the Republic of Bashkortostan.

August 2020: The coronavirus continues to break records, thousands of people protest in Belarus after Lukashenko's "election," Alexei Navalny is in a coma after a poisoning attempt, and in Bashkortostan, there's a standoff on Mount Kushtau—Olga Komleva, as usual, posted her opinion on all this and much more on her social media. 10-12 new posts on Facebook every day were commonplace for her.

The events on the Kushtau slope in 2020 were just the peak of the struggle against the BSC, which began many years earlier. Initially, the authorities planned to develop the Toratau shihan.

"My mother was also an active defender of Mount Toratau. Together with her uncle, academician and professor Rais Nurievich Zagidullin, they wrote numerous appeals to both members of parliament and officials, arguing that Mount Toratau should not be demolished and that there were alternative options for producing soda. Rais Nurievich prepared the chemical justification, and my mother took it all to Moscow (she lived in Moscow for the last 16 years and was a journalist accredited to the State Duma)," Komleva wrote on Facebook in August 2023 after a trip to Kushtau.

Rais Nurievich Zagidullin (brother of Olga Komleva's grandmother) was an Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, a chemical engineer, professor, and inventor. He developed and implemented over 50 innovative technologies. He died in October 2021 from complications related to the coronavirus.

Komleva was unable to attend the defenders' camp in August, but she did participate in the #KushtauLive flash mobs that were held that year, starting in January.

In the mid-2010s, when heated debates raged in the republic over the mandatory study of the Bashkir language, Komleva was accused of activities contrary to the interests of the Bashkirs. She allegedly opposed the "use of the republics' official languages ​​in the education system."

"But that's not true. I believe the state should take measures to preserve the language and culture of the peoples in the national republics, but through other means: supporting music, film, theater, and art," Komleva explained. "The national republics have a major problem: the lack of translations of scientific literature into Bashkir, Tatar, and other languages."

She herself does not speak Bashkir, but, thanks to her mother, she understands spoken language. 

Following Alexei Navalny's arrest at the airport in January 2021, protests and marches took place in Ufa, like many other Russian cities.

On January 23, Lilia Chanysheva and Olga Komleva were detained along with numerous other protesters. The Komleva Court fined Chanysheva 25,000 rubles, and Chanysheva was sent to a temporary detention facility for five days. 

"I know I'll be arrested either before or during the protest," Olga wrote on Facebook on January 24, ahead of the next protest scheduled for January 31.

When Olga arrived to pick up Lilia from the temporary detention center, the security forces staged a whole spectacle: Komleva's car was blocked by traffic police and patrol police, and she herself was nearly kidnapped and taken to the station. She filmed the entire incident on her phone and later posted the half-hour "film" on YouTube.

Komleva was charged with calling for participation in unauthorized protests on Facebook. The fine for calling for protesters to take to the streets on January 23 was 25 rubles. More fines followed, but compared to the lawsuits from law enforcement, they now seem like mere trifles.

The protests following Navalny's arrest and accusations of "crimes" took place over the weekend. And the authorities found a new tool of pressure: collecting monetary "compensation" for their employees' overtime pay. Lawsuits from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the National Guard, and their various units poured in, one after another or all at once. A total of 18 lawsuits totaling 5,6 million rubles were filed.

Bailiffs seized all of the Komlevs' property, including their car. From then on, Olga traveled around the city by bus or bicycle, but continued to attend pickets, cover protests, public gatherings (including in the republic's districts), and activist trials. 

Komleva began collaborating with RusNews at the end of 2021. Lilia Chanysheva was already in pretrial detention at the time. Charges were brought against the head of Navalny's Ufa headquarters on November 9, 2021. Searches were conducted at that time for everyone who had collaborated with the headquarters in any way.

"This time, the security forces managed to surprise her [Olga Komleva]: they brought in a special bus that jammed communications for four hours so the activist couldn't go live," wrote Ilya Azar in his article about Ufa opposition figures.

Komleva also told the journalist that after the search, the neighbors began locking their gates, something they had never done before (the Komlevs live in a private sector in the suburbs).

Olga Komleva was taken away on March 27, 2024. Initially, she assumed it was for her "participation" in the January events in Baimak, which Komleva had covered for her editorial staff. The authorities treated the protest as "mass unrest," and approximately 80 criminal cases have been opened to date, with the investigation being led by a team of security officials from Moscow. One of these "paratroopers," an investigator named Pryakhin, was among those who came for Olga.

"Olga Yuryevna Komleva is accused of voluntarily joining the extremist group while in Ufa, under the influence of propaganda about the activities of the FBK (Navalny's Team) extremist group, which was distributed on internet resources," the press service of the Kirovsky District Court of Ufa reported after the March 28 hearing.

Judge Rafis Nabiev remanded the activist to pretrial detention for two months, until May 27 (the prosecution will likely request an extension).

"We discussed this scenario. So, overall, we were prepared," Vyacheslav Komlev commented to NeMoskva. "Of course, it's hard without her. There's a feeling of emptiness, anxiety... And then there's everyday life, you have to reorganize everything. These seem like small things, but in reality, you have to change half your life. My son understood everything correctly. Especially since he's already survived one search, when they took his computer, among other things."

During the pretrial detention hearing, Komlev failed to deliver the diabetes pills for his wife. He also failed to do so the following day when he was preparing the package at the pretrial detention center. Olga has type 2 diabetes.

"This means my body has trouble dissolving certain foods," Komleva wrote on Facebook last February. "For almost 10 years, I haven't eaten pasta, bread, sugar, or rice... you're probably feeling sorry for me by now, but don't. Diabetes doesn't affect life expectancy; you just need to eat what you can, drink plenty of water, and exercise."

Olga admitted that she sometimes indulges in "unhealthy" food, but immediately goes for a walk to "get her blood sugar going." She even found some positives in her condition—diet and exercise help her stay in good physical shape: "Everyone has their challenges. Diabetes is just a different way of life."

On April 3, Olga's first letter from prison was published on her Facebook page. She reported that she was being held alone in a four-person cell.

"It's warm here, there's a sink with hot and cold running water, a refrigerator, a drinking water tank, and they gave me a TV and checkers," Komleva wrote. "The food is delicious, and the doctor said she'll put me on a diabetic diet."

"I imagined prison as a gloomy place with menacing guards. I was afraid of pressure or domination. But here it's bright, clean, and no one dominates. Everyone I've met treats me humanely: both in the temporary detention center and in the pretrial detention center," writes Olga Komleva. "When I was being moved into my cell, there was a cat lying in the hallway—a spitting image of our Basya. And yesterday I asked if I could sing during our walk. They allowed it."

Olga had some diabetes medications with her. And on April 3, Vyacheslav Komlev wrote on social media that he had finally managed to deliver her essential medications.

During the investigation and in court, Olga Komleva's interests are represented by lawyer Mikhail Lavrentyev. Olga, of course, does not consider herself guilty of the crime.

"Olga Komleva stopped collaborating with the headquarters even before it was designated an extremist organization; the charges against her are unfounded. I don't yet know what the case files contain; the investigation is not yet complete, so it's hard to imagine what evidence they could have. We were shown screenshots of some old Instagram posts where my client allegedly demonstrates her involvement with the FBK. But, I repeat, all of this occurred before the decision designating the organization as extremist came into force," Lavrentyev commented.

According to him, Olga is holding up well in custody and has access to a library and the opportunity to read books.

On April 5, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Bashkortostan rejected Komleva's appeal against her pretrial detention, and she will remain in pretrial detention. Under the charges against her, Olga Komleva faces up to six years in prison.

As a reminder, letters of support for political prisoners can be sent through the Zonatelecom service (correspondence is censored before delivery). Olga Yuryevna Komleva, born in 1979, is being held in Pretrial Detention Center No. 1 in the Republic of Bashkortostan.