RUSSIA: A Russian father was arrested by police when they found out that his child had drawn anti-war pictures at school. On Tuesday, he was sentenced to two years in prison for slandering the military.
In a dramatic turn of events, however, a court spokesperson said that Alexei Moskalyov had broken out of house arrest overnight and that no one knew where he was.
Since he was put under house arrest at the beginning of this month and his 13-year-old daughter was transferred to a state-run shelter, Moskalyov, a single parent from the town of Yefremov, 150 miles south of Moscow, has been isolated from her.
The family claimed that since his daughter, a sixth-grader, refused to take part in a patriotic class at her school and made several drawings depicting rockets being fired at a family standing under a Ukrainian flag and another that read “Glory to Ukraine!” they have come under pressure from the police.
At the time, school authorities called the police, who interrogated the girl and intimidated her father.
The father was ultimately charged with defaming the armed forces for his posts, in which he called the Russian regime “terrorists” and the Russian army “rapists,” after the police started looking into Moskalyov’s social media activity.
Russian human rights groups were not happy about the high-profile case, which led to an online campaign to get the father and daughter back together.
Moskalyov reportedly broke out of his house arrest early Tuesday morning, and police in the Tula region, south of Moscow, said they had “started looking for the suspect.”
The children’s shelter was holding an “emergency” conference after learning that Moskalyov had left, according to the MSK1 news source.
Vladimir Bilienko, a lawyer for Moskalyov, said that the girl would be sent to an orphanage if no close relative was willing to take care of her.
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