By Solomon "Customs" Bridges
HELSINKI — Nikita and Olga Belov left Moscow in 2022, in the first weeks after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They say they had drawn the attention of Russian authorities for speaking out against the war — a military summons for Nikita, threatening messages, officials trying to track them down.
Finland has not been persuaded. The couple has been denied asylum more than once, and now faces the prospect of deportation to Russia, according to the Guardian, which spoke with the Belovs about their case. They say a return home carries the risk of arrest, imprisonment and torture, given their pro-Ukrainian activism since fleeing.
The Guardian's reporting does not detail the legal grounds Finnish authorities have cited for rejecting the family's claims, and The American Times has not independently reviewed the asylum file. What is documented is the stakes: Russia has jailed thousands of its own citizens under wartime laws criminalizing criticism of the invasion, and rights groups have long tracked reprisals against dissidents who leave the country and continue speaking out from abroad.
Finland shares an 830-mile border with Russia and closed it entirely in 2023 over a surge of migrants Helsinki accused Moscow of orchestrating. That backdrop — a frontline NATO state wary of being used as a pressure valve by the Kremlin — shapes every asylum case Finnish officials now weigh, even one as individually human as the Belovs'.
What happens to this one family is a small case in a large machine. But the machine is what decides whether opposing a war from exile buys you safety, or just delays the reckoning.
— Nothing happens 'over there' anymore.
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."