Russia’s Security Council is concerned about ‘separatist sentiment’ in Karelia, Nikolai Patrushev, Head of the Security Counciland a former director of the FSB, said during a meeting on the development of the state border.
The Finnish nationalist associations are acting under the guise of human rights organisations and begin to have ‘serious ideological influence’ on the population of the region, he said.
“As anti-Russian rhetoric is stepping up in the West, revanchist and nationalist organisations started to be active in Finland,” Patrushev stated at the meeting in Petrozavodsk, the biggest city in Karelia.
In January 2015, the Youth Human Rights Group in Petrozavodsk was closed down by the Ministry of Justice of Karelia that referred to law “On Countering Extremist Activity”.
Its leader Maxim Efimov was politically persecuted forhis article “Karelia is tired of priests”, published on the website of the organisation.
A criminal case was opened against he young activist. He was subjected to a forced psychiatric examination. Leaving the hospital Maxim Efimov fled from Russia and received political refugee status in Estonia. The Russian authorities put the young man on the international search list.
Once Karelian Duchy was part of the Kingdom of Sweden. In 1721 the current territory of Karelia was occupied by the Russian Empire.
YW/MS, www.belsat.eu/en/, following grani.ru
