It was officially Belarus that extradited Russian opposition activist Vladimir Yegorov to Russia to face charges of making ‘public calls to extremist activities’. This was, however, only because Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU] chose to bypass Ukraine’s legislation and its international obligations altogether by simply dumping Yegorov, who had applied for asylum in Ukraine, on the border, leaving him no choice but to cross into Belarus. It is impossible to believe that the SBU officials did not understand the strong likelihood that the charges Yegorov was facing were politically motivated. The fact that he was only held in detention for a few months was not something they could have known when they chose to thus treat a person justifiably seeking political asylum..
Yegorov is a 51-year-old electrician and the head of the local branch of the Yabloko Party in Toropets (Tver oblast). Criminal charges were initiated against him in October 2016 for so-called ‘calls to extremist activity’. These were over a strongly-worded post on the social network VKontakte in which he was highly critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He later explained that he had posted the comments after Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told teachers that they should find a second job (since it’s impossible to live on a teacher’s pay). He wrote that everybody goes for Medvedev, whereas the real culprit is Putin.
