Russia cancels passport of anti-war student who fled the country

A university student who fled Russia last year to avoid prosecution for criticizing the war in Ukraine said on Monday that Russian authorities had canceled her domestic passport.

“I am not worried because I had no rights before anyway,” Olesya Krivtsova wrote in a Telegram post announcing the cancellation of her passport. “The only thing that is worrying is how the insane government of R(ussia) is coming up with more and more perverse ways to put pressure on those who have left the country.”

Krivtsova, a former resident of the northern city of Arkhangelsk escaped to Lithuania to escape accusations that she had “justified terrorism” and “discredited the Russian armed forces” in her social media posts.

A few days after she fled the country, the Russian Interior Ministry put Krivtsova on the wanted list and arrested her in absentia.

The Norway-based news channel Barents Observer, where Krivtsova currently works, reported that she discovered in mid-July that her domestic passport was invalid, shortly after the Russian authorities rejected her application for an extension on the grounds that she was hiding from the public prosecutor.

Krivtsova, who said she received her now-revoked passport while under house arrest, had signed the document with the word “freedom” – which could formally justify the revocation. However, Barents Observer noted that two other activists from Russia had recently had their passports revoked while abroad.

“The situation with my passport shows that Russians who have emigrated urgently need to improve the legalization system if it becomes impossible to obtain documents in (Russia),” said Krivtsova said in a Telegram post on Tuesday.

According to the investigative portal IStories, the domestic passports of at least nine Russian citizens who had left the country were recently canceled by the Russian authorities.