ST. PETERSBURG (Sputnik) — The Finnish authorities have taken three children from their mother, a citizen of Russia, and sent them to a children’s shelter, a Finnish human rights activist said.
"The Finnish authorities in the town of Seinaejoki have again extrajudicially taken away without objective reasons three children from Russian mother Viktoriya Medvedeva… on the grounds that the mother has allegedly slapped them," Johan Baeckman said in a statement on Tuesday.
He added that the woman was requesting assistance from the Russian authorities, diplomats and Russia’s new Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Anna Kuznetsova.
According to Baeckman, Medvedeva lives in the Russian city of Petrozavodsk, which is located some 150 miles from the Russian-Finnish border, and temporarily works in Finland. All the three children have Russian citizenship.