Ex-MP from Finland Turtiainen received refugee status in Russia Anno Turtiainen advocated the preservation of relations between Russia and Finland and opposed the latter’s accession to NATO.

Finnish politician Anno Turtiainen and his wife Minna Marita Turtiainen have been granted refugee status in Russia, Interior Ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk said.

“My colleagues from the Migration Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in Moscow were approached by Anno Turtiainen and his wife Minna Marita Turtiainen with a request for recognition as refugees in the territory of the Russian Federation,” she said.

Turtiainen founded and led the political party “Power belongs to the people”, advocated the preservation of relations between Russia and Finland and opposed the latter’s accession to NATO. He and his family were harassed by the Finnish authorities. “The ex-MP noted that he was one of the seven who voted against Finland joining NATO. After that, his family’s life became very difficult,” Wolf added.

The refugee certificates were issued to the Turtiainen family by Alexey Zhurin, Head of the Department for Refugees, Temporary Asylum and Internally Displaced Persons at the Department of Internal Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in Moscow.

How did this all happen?

Turtiainen was elected to the Finnish parliament on the list of the True Finns party in 2019, but a year later he was expelled from the party.

In 2021, Turtiainen created his own party called “Power belongs to the people” and a parliamentary faction of the same name within himself, but he could not be re-elected in the new elections in the spring of 2023.

In 2023, Turtiainen scared the Finnish authorities with a video from St. Petersburg in which he stated that he represented Finland at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

In the same year, it became clear that in 2022 Turtiainen was suspended from meetings of the parliamentary defense committee, in which he served as deputy chairman. This happened after one of the closed meetings at which the country’s accession to NATO was discussed.

After that, the deputy was suspected of passing secret data to Russia, but the Finnish media wrote about this incident only a year later against the background of Turtiainen’s statements about his intentions to run for president of Finland.

This fall, the politician announced that he had moved to Russia and, together with his wife Minna, would remain living in Moscow. The ex-MP runs a YouTube channel in which he admires the sights of the Russian capital, the range of goods in stores and food in