“The suspect admitted to flying a drone in Svalbard,” police official Anja Mikkelsen said. “He admitted flying a drone but had no reason to believe it was illegal. He is a British citizen,” said lawyer Jens Bernhard Herstad. The vessel had sailed around the Svalbard archipelago, a Norwegian region strategically located in the heart of the Arctic with a relatively large Russian community, and along the Norwegian coast for several months. Earlier this year, Mr Yakunin, who lives in Italy but used to live in London, told exile Russian media that he had never voted for Vladimir Putin and opposed the war in Ukraine. His father was placed on a US sanctions list of Russian officials and businessmen after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Vladimir Yakunin kicked out by Putin over his son’s British citizenship
The staunch Putin ally was sacked in 2015 after his son applied for British citizenship, which the Russian President is said to have regarded as “treason”. Jonas Gahr Store, Norway’s prime minister, has blamed “foreign intelligence” for the spate of mysterious drone sightings reported in recent weeks in what is believed to be a veiled accusation in Moscow. Norway replaced Russia as the main gas supplier to the EU after the invasion of Ukraine and sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline led to increased security around gas and oil platforms. “It is obviously unacceptable for foreign intelligence agencies to fly drones over Norwegian airports,” Mr Store said after a drone sighting near the airport in Bergen, Norway’s second largest city, briefly suspended the air traffic. On Monday, Russia’s embassy in Oslo said the “hysteria” in Norway was affecting “ordinary tourists”, calling the ban on Russians flying drones “unjustified and discriminatory”. Meanwhile, Finland’s main political parties backed plans to build a fence along its 830-mile border with Russia to stop large-scale illegal crossings. Helsinki is worried that Putin may arm the migrants after 40,000 people crossed into Finland when Putin ordered a partial mobilization to bolster his army. Some have now left Finland for other EU countries, while others have sought asylum in the country, Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s foreign minister, said on a trip to London on Wednesday.
