Interview: Putin-Mask Protester 'Safe' In Ukraine After Midnight Run From Russia
By Christopher Miller
KYIV -- Vladimir Putin has asked for political asylum in Ukraine -- sort of.
It’s not actually the Russian president, but Roman Roslovtsev -- an anti-Kremlin activist known for staging one-man protests against Russia’s strict law on public assembly while wearing a rubber Putin mask -- who is asking Ukraine to provide him sanctuary.
Roslovtsev fled Moscow around noon on August 20, leaving the room he rented in the Russian capital and all of his belongings -- including the mask -- behind, he told RFE/RL in an interview in Kyiv on August 22. He took with him only his Russian “internal passport,” some cash, and the clothes on his back. Fearing Russian security services were listening to his phone calls, he didn’t even tell his mother.
A friend ferried him into Belarus by car and he approached the Ukrainian border just before midnight, Roslovtsev said, making his way on foot before hitching a ride on a truck.
There Roslovtsev told Ukrainian border guards and a security-services officer: “Please, I want political asylum in Ukraine.”
A spokesman for Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service, Oleh Slobodyan, confirmed to RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service on August 21 that Roslovtsev requested political asylum at passport control at the Novi Yarylovichi crossing in northern Ukraine, on the border with Belarus.
After letting Roslovtsev enter Ukraine, border guards treated him to coffee and put him on the first bus to Kyiv, where he arrived -- exhausted but feeling free -- at around 10 a.m. on August 21. “I feel good [in Kyiv]…I am safe,” he said.
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