Court Keeps Anti-War Russians Facing Deportation from Finland in Custody ...

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Russians who helped Ukrainians in Finland face deportation — Mediazona Finnish authorities want to deport Russians Olga and Nikita Belov, who applied for asylum in the country, Mediazona reports, citing former municipal deputy from St. Petersburg Svetlana…

❗️Court keeps anti-war Russians facing deportation from Finland in custody

Olga and Nikita Belov reported this on TV Rain.

“The court hearing (on the preventive measure — ed.) took place, and it did not even take place today, but yesterday. Unfortunately, the court decided that it was necessary to continue keeping us in custody, and so yesterday we were transferred from Turku prison to the temporary detention center in Metsälä, in Helsinki. We are here now. In Helsinki prison,” the activists said.

According to them, Finnish authorities believe they do not face persecution in Russia.

“They do not say this directly. And overall, to a large extent, in some sense they even ignore this risk related to access to state secrets. The only thing they said once was that this is not a risk and that people are not automatically persecuted for this in Russia,” Olga and Nikita Belov said.

They are now trying to “suspend the deportation”: “We are using every legal tool that could allow us to do this.”

“It is hard now, hard to live through, and legally hard to do as well. But thanks to the support of our friends, acquaintances, and even many people we did not know before, we are still holding on, we are fighting together. We are especially touched by the support of Ukrainians, those we helped, even those we did not personally know. So we would like to publicly thank everyone for the help, support, and everything,” they added.

🔵The fact that Finnish authorities want to deport the Belovs, who applied for asylum in the country, was reported by former municipal deputy from St. Petersburg Svetlana Utkina.

🔵According to Belov, he left Russia because of his work on an “unnamed secret project” at the Bardin Central Research Institute for Ferrous Metallurgy. His superiors claimed the project had nothing to do with the war, but later it became clear that this was not true. Belov refused to work, after which, according to him, “the situation escalated quickly,” and he left for Finland together with his mother.

🔵Utkina sent Mediazona a photo of an article in the Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat, which says that the Belovs helped Ukrainian refugees and cooperated with the organization FinEst Volunteers in the city of Uusikaupunki.

Photo: Turun Sanomaat

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