FDP politician Michael Rubin is wanted by Russia

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Michael Rubin, FDP politician from Frankfurt am Main

Photo: Michael Rubin / YouTube

The Russian government has put out a search notice for several high-ranking European politicians - including Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas. This emerges from a note that was posted on the Moscow Interior Ministry website on Tuesday. Now a German politician, Michael Rubin, is said to be on the list. The person affected described this to the “Bild” newspaper.

Rubin, FDP politician from Frankfurt am Main, claims to be listed in the Russian Interior Ministry database with a photo, name, place and date of birth. On a corresponding screenshot of the call, he is classified as a “particularly dangerous wanted criminal.” There is no explanation of the alleged crimes.

Rubin has Belarusian roots and has been campaigning against the dictator of his home country, Alexander Lukashenko, and the Russian government for years. In the past, Rubin supported politicians imprisoned in Russia with open letters, campaigned for the Belarusian opposition figure Svetlana Tichanowskaya and organized vigils in Germany for the murdered Putin opponent Boris Nemtsov. He repeatedly criticizes Ukraine on his YouTube channel. 

»A kind of “greeting” to the “bigger brother””

"However, none of these are crimes in a democratic country where law and order take precedence over the personal ambitions of a dictator," Rubin told the "Bild" newspaper. He suspects that the Kremlin put him on the wanted list to do the Belarusian regime a favor. “This could be a kind of ‘greeting’ to the ‘bigger brother,’” says Rubin.

The allegations against Estonian Prime Minister Kallas are also questionable. According to the Kremlin, she is accused of hostile actions against Russia and “desecration of historical memory.” A search is also underway for Estonian State Secretary Taimar Peterkop and Lithuanian Culture Minister Simonas Kairys.

The background is the removal of Soviet monuments from public spaces in Estonia. Since Russia's attack on Ukraine, a public debate has broken out about this. (Read more here). There are hundreds of Soviet war memorials in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. Estonia had already demolished a Soviet war memorial - a replica of a T-34 tank with a red star - in Narva on the border with Russia in the summer of 2022, a few months after the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

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