Ombudsman: Russian woman likely to lose battle over her kids in Finland
MOSCOW. Jan 24 (Interfax) - The odds are that a row over children between a woman living in Russia and her ex-husband living in Finland will result in the two six-year-old twins staying with their father, a Russian ombudsman has argued.
Svetlana Karelina and Sergei Timonen lived in Petrozavodsk, Russia, before moving to Finland in 2011. Several months later, Karelina decided to return to Russia with the couple's son Artyom and daughter Sonya.
Under a ruling by the Petrozavodsk court, the children are to live with their mother at her home in the city. Karelina and the children are Russian citizens.
The divorced parents had an agreement that the children would occasionally stay with Timonen in Finland. However, when the twins went for a two-week visit in November 2012, Timonen refused to send them back and is now seeking a court order to deprive Karelina of her maternal rights.
"Hasty decisions are being made to give the children residency in Finland, while Svetlana is threatened with loss of her parental rights. A suit has been brought," Pavel Astakhov, the Russian commissioner for children's rights, tweeted on Thursday.
"The Finnish Justice Ministry in effect takes the father's side," he said in his blog in the online microblogging network.
Earlier on Thursday, Finnish human rights activist Johan Backman said Timonen filed a suit with the court of the city of Joensuu seeking an order to strip his ex-wife of her parental rights in absentia.
Backman pointed out that Karelina and her children have only Russian citizenship and are officially resident in Petrozavodsk.
"No one knows where the children are - the official information is that they are at their father's home. The Finnish Justice Ministry announced on Wednesday that the case will have to be dealt with in Finland. This means that Finland sees itself as the children's permanent place of residence, and that Svetlana has no chance of fair litigation," Backman told Interfax.
The first suit brought by Timonen against Karelina on December 3 was thrown out on January 17. "This means that there's no legal basis for the Russian children's stay in Finland," he said.
Nevertheless, also on January 17, Finnish court officials handed documents to Karelina setting out Timonen's demands and told her she was to respond within two weeks.
"Before January 31, Svetlana is going to provide the Finnish court with her responses to the demands of her ex-husband despite the fact that the Finnish authorities have practically abducted her children," Backman said.