Patriotic Activist Flees Russia After Being Faced With Possessing ‘Secret’ Maps
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Anton Kolomitsyn is employed to getting formal documents. For longer than three decades, he has got invested most of their leisure time tramping the remote corners of Russia in search of the undiscovered stays of Soviet soldiers killed in the region during World War II why not try this out.
He’s got an extraordinary stack of commendations, letters of appreciation, as well as other tokens of recognition of their efforts.
But in early stages the morning of January 21, agents for the Federal safety provider (FSB) presented Kolomitsyn with two more formal papers: a search warrant as well as an arrest warrant on fees of possessing state secrets.
“I, needless to say, understand what the FSB is and all sorts of their history, but I would never ever had any transactions using them before, ” Kolomitsyn told RFE/RL. “But now one morning at 7 a. M january. I became resting a sweet sleep and — growth! — they hand me a search warrant. Every thing took place politely, officially. They don’t turn the drawers out, nevertheless they had every thing.
“They took the computer systems, the discs, the flash drives, ” he included. “and additionally they took me personally for their head office on Liteiny Avenue. “
A day or two after that event, Kolomitsyn fled their homeland. He talked to RFE/RL from an immigration center when you look at the Netherlands, where he’s got sent applications for governmental asylum.
“I happened to be pretty upset by all of that, ” he recalled. “we have actually lots of connections and I consulted using them. All of them said, ‘While you are free all on your own recognizance, as you nevertheless have actually the possibility, gather your material and get out. ‘”
The costs against Kolomitsyn stem from his purchase in might 2018 of a pc disk containing a number of topographic maps for the Karelia region which were published by the Soviet Defense Ministry within the 1960s and ’70s.Read More
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