Single father Alexey Moskalev deported from Belarus to Russia, lawyer says

Alexey Moskalev, the single father from Russia’s Tula region who fled house arrest for Belarus after being sentenced to two years in prison on charges of “discrediting” the Russian army, has been extradited back to Russia, the human rights media project OVD-Info reported on Wednesday, citing a lawyer who tried to visit Moskalev at the Belarusian detention center where he was previously being held.

Moskalev escaped house arrest shortly before his sentencing hearing in Tula on March 28. Two days later, lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov reported that he had been arrested in Minsk.

While the charges against Moskalev are officially related to posts he made on social media, Russian authorities first began targeting him after his sixth-grade daughter, Masha, drew an anti-war picture in school in April 2022. Last week, Russian Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova reported that Moskalev’s daughter, Masha, had been transferred from a state shelter to the custody of her mother, from whom she was previously estranged.