Ambassador summoned to Russian Foreign Ministry over arrests of Russians in Norway

Norwegian Ambassador to Moscow Robert Kvile was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday over the detention and trials of Russian citizens on charges of allegedly illegal use of unmanned aerial vehicles.

"In connection with the detentions and trials in recent months against Russian citizens on charges of allegedly illegal use of drones, Ambassador Robert Kvile of the Kingdom of Norway was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on November 28. He was told that such practices were inadmissible," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a release.

"It was noted that the sentences against Russians are politically motivated and have nothing to do with the principles of fair and unbiased justice," the ministry added.

Moscow also urged Oslo to stop persecuting Russians on ethnic grounds. "We urged the Norwegian authorities to abandon such Russophobic actions and persecution of Russian nationals on the grounds of their ethnicity," the Foreign Ministry stressed.

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 Last week, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) reported that the district court of Hordaland in Norway had sentenced a 34-year-old Russian national to 90 days in prison after being detained for taking unauthorized pictures with the use of a drone.

Also in November, the cases of three other Russian citizens detained for filming with the use of drones are to be tried by the Vadso district court and in Tromso. The sanctions law forbidding Russian companies and citizens from flying drones over Norwegian territory was passed against the background of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine.

On November 11, the Norwegian prosecutor's office brought charges against Russian businessperson Andrey Yakunin. According to the indictment, Yakunin was in Spitsbergen from August 3 to September 6, 2022 and repeatedly used a drone. The trial of the businessman will be held on November 29.