A Yalta-based blogger who initially supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea but then later wrote critical posts about officials has been deported to Ukraine.
Yevhen Gayvoronskiy was taken by officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and Migration Service to Ukraine’s border in the Luhansk region, said Refat Chubarov, the chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, in a Facebook post on Dec. 31.
He was due to arrive in Kyiv later that day, Chubarov said.
A Yalta court earlier this month ruled that Gayvoronskiy should be deported after earlier concluding that he was improperly given a Russian passport.
Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and later gave residents Russian passports.
Gayvoronskiy was detained on Oct. 22 for avoiding drug treatment, two weeks after he posted on his Facebook page critical comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A court found him guilty of an administrative violation for the post.
The blogger was also arrested in March for 12 days on charges of taking drugs without a doctor’s prescription and required to undergo treatment. Gayvoronskiy called the accusation “nonsense.”
Shortly after the March arrest, he began to post “pro-Ukrainian” comments on social media, resulting in his termination at a pro-Russian outlet in Crimea.
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