Home sweet home. Putin orders Russian officials to bring families back from abroad?

Russian officials and MPs have been advised to bring their relatives, namely children studying abroad and parents living in other countries, back home, Znak.com reports.

The informal request was made by the presidential administration, the media outlet states with reference to five unnamed sources affected.

According to znak.com, the recommendation concerns all officials, including members of the presidential administration, as well as deputies at all levels of government and employees of state-owned corporations.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told news agency TASS that he had ‘never seen or heard’ of such information.

It is a well-known fact that the children of many Russian political figures study and live abroad – while their parents urge Russians to be patriots and complain of being ‘surrounded by enemies’. In 2012, opposition activist Alexei Navalny said in his blog that three daughters of Sergei Zheleznyak, a prominent member of the faction ‘United Russia’ in the State Duma, were the students of foreign universities, as well as a son of notorious senator Yelena Mizulina, former children’s rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov – the list is may be continued, let alone Vladimir Putin’s daughter Maria who has presumably spent years in the Netherlands.

Belsat.eu, following Meduza