The London Times reports that the Trump Administration has been deporting Russian dissenters who fled Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime, sending them back to Russia, and even apparently helping Russian authorities persecute them:
On August 27, less than a fortnight after President Trump's summit with Putin in Alaska, dozens of Russians were rounded up and deported. Among them was Artyom Vovchenko, 27, a deserter from the war in Ukraine. He is facing a prison sentence of up to decade or could be sent back to the front line.….
Although the deportation of Russians to Russia has accelerated under Trump, the policy began under his predecessor Joe Biden. According to Dmitry Valuev, 46, president of Russian America for Democracy in Russia, an organisation that supports political refugees, deportations under Biden were smaller in number.
He said Russian deportees on those flights avoided returning to Russia by begging for their passports during layovers in China and Morocco and buying flights to alternative destinations.
However, the US now appears to have enlisted the help of the Egyptian government to ensure the migrants are delivered back to Moscow.
The first mass deportation this year took place in June when 47 Russians were put on a flight to Egypt and returned to Russia via Cairo.
On August 27, between 30 and 60 people were sent to Russia on the same route. Some tried to get off the plane in Cairo but were restrained by Egyptian officials and forced to board the onward flight to Moscow, according to Valuev. He believes that US immigration authorities are now working with the Russian FSB [Putin's secret police agency].
I think the June deportation and the August deportation were co-ordinated with the Russian authorities," he said. "The middlemen in the US immigration system and the Russian FSB could not talk to each other directly without approval from higher up. Someone gave that approval."
When the dissidents arrived in Russia, the Russian authorities were given documents relating to their asylum applications in the US. Those dossiers, outlining their political beliefs and criticisms of Putin, could be used to prosecute them back home, campaigners believe.
Khodorkovsky said the treatment of Russian dissidents by the US posed the question of "whether the current administration is prepared to act as a leader of the democratic world".
He said the deportations were particularly troubling given the Russians were "accompanied by documents that can help fabricate criminal cases against them, and all of this at the expense of the American taxpayer".
"This is no longer about democratic leadership — it's about the risk of being seen as an ally of dictators," he said.
