Daily Mail’s man in the Duma? Western media’s favorite Russian conspiracy loon Solovey reportedly considering parliamentary run

With parliamentary elections set for this autumn, Russian parties are starting to select their candidates. Astonishingly, a man best described as Moscow’s answer to Alex Jones is tipped to join the fray as a liberal contender.

In a move set to excite foreign journalists in Moscow, notorious political scientist and regular Western media commentator Valery Solovey is one of the possible choices for Boris Titov’s ‘Party of Growth.’

Over the past year, State Ombudsman Titov’s faction has been collecting celebrities as members, including Saint Petersburg rockstar Sergey Shnurov, the frontman of ‘Leningrad.’ Now, he may be joined by the infamous conspiracy theorist.

Writing on Facebook, fellow political scientist Konstantin Kalachev revealed that Solovey might run to represent Kostroma, an historic city in western Russia.

“We started talking about the State Duma elections, and I told him that the country is waiting for his participation,” Kalachev said. “He told me that the Party of Growth is ready to nominate him.”

Speaking to Moscow daily, Kommersant, Viktor Zvagelsky, the party’s deputy chairman, noted that the political scientist has been cooperating with them for a long time.

“Perhaps Valery Solovey will be there, but this issue has not yet been resolved,” he said.

In the West, Solovey is known as a commentator on the Kremlin, regularly pushing outlandish theories about Russia’s political elite. Last year, Solovey claimed that Russia had produced a “very efficient” Covid-19 cure only given to select members of the elite. In 2019, he claimed that President Vladimir Putin’s “system would collapse” - a prediction that clearly did not come true. However, his clear tendency for wacky stories hasn’t put mainstream media off quoting him. In November, Solovey claimed that Putin has cancer, which was later reprinted in UK papers, the Sun, the Daily Mail, and the Express. So far, this also seems to be completely false.

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