Wagner Capture | A Russian terrorist suspect got to Finland under a new name

Finland had granted a one-year residence permit in Finland to the arrested person For Voislav Tordenwhom Ukraine suspects of terrorist crimes.

Torden’s legal assistant tells HS about the residence permit Natalia Malgina.

“It’s really interesting that the residence permit was granted,” says Malgina.

Torden is a 36-year-old Russian citizen who is connected to the mercenary organization Wagner through the Russian Rusich group.

He is by his birth name Jan Petrovski, and with this name he is also on the EU sanctions list. He is also known as the “Great Slav” on discussion forums.

The man’s stay in Finland was revealed on Friday, when the district court of Eastern Uusimaa considered the police’s request to extend the man’s detention in order to process Ukraine’s extradition request.

On Saturday, HS failed to confirm the basis of the residence permit previously granted to Torden by the Finnish authorities.

Male the family wanted to move to Finland. It seemed to be successful this summer, when his Russian wife was accepted as a student at a Finnish university of applied sciences.

According to legal assistant Malgina, the residence permit was granted based on the wife’s right to study for at least one year for the whole family.

“He [Torden] wanted a Nordic education for her children. At the same time, he wanted to be close to Russia,” says Malgina.

Torden has lived and attended school in Norway, where his mother moved from St. Petersburg because of her new spouse.

Torden’s family moved from St. Petersburg to Finland on July 19, when he and his three children crossed the Finnish border in Vaalimaa by car, according to Malgina, without any problems.

Before the wife’s studies began and the family settled in Finland, they were supposed to be relatives in France. They stayed at a hotel, from where they continued their journey to Helsinki-Vantaa airport, says Malgina.

The next day, July 20, the police arrested Torden in the passenger hall of Helsinki-Vantaa airport on suspicion of an entry violation.

Suspicions of terrorism there was no talk at first. Malgina says that she wondered why Torden was detained in Mäntsälä for five weeks, when in similar cases the conversion usually takes place in a couple of days.

According to the legal assistant, Torden had visited Finland last year with a tourist visa without any problems.

The legal assistant tries to prevent Torden’s extradition from Finland to Ukraine.

“He certainly wouldn’t even make it to the Ukrainian courtroom alive. His life is threatened,” Malgina claims.

According to the legal assistant, Torden has participated in “political activities” in Ukraine in 2014, but denies having committed terrorist acts or fought there.

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“Where is it written that I may not participate in any kind of military action?” – Petrovski in an interview with Meduza in 2017

Independently Russian media Meduza’s reports tell otherwise about the time when Torden’s name was still Petrovski.

Medusa in the interview in 2017, he told about the founding of the Rusiš group in 2014 as part of the general Alexander Bednov led by the “Batman Battalion”.

Petrovski presented himself as Rusich’s deputy leader and founder, who said the members were nationalists from St. Petersburg, Moscow and other “Rus cities”. Rus refers to the ancient territories inhabited by the Slavs, extending at least to the territories of present-day Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

According to Meduza, Rusiš took part in the battles at Luhansk and Donetsk airports.

In the Luhansk region, the Russians carried out sabotage attacks in the background of the front line. In the Donetsk region, they took part in battles near the villages of Belokamenka and Novolaspa, Meduza wrote.

The Rusich gang gained notoriety when it destroyed a Ukrainian military convoy near the village of Metalist in the Luhansk region on September 5, 2014.

Bednov, the leader of the Batman battalion, died in early 2015. At the end of June, Rusich’s group left Ukraine.

“I went there to defend the Russians, and this is a great honor for a Russian fighter,” Petrovski told Meduza.

Involvement to the fighting in eastern Ukraine, Petrosvki did not hide in a 2017 interview with Meduza. He complained that Norway had since denied him a permit to carry weapons and had taken away his hunting gun.

“My weapon was taken from me on the basis that I went to war on the Russian side,” he said.

“Where is it written that I may not participate in any kind of military action?”

Petrovski had moved from St. Petersburg to the city of Tønesberg, Norway, due to his mother’s remarriage in 2004. He learned the Norwegian language, went to school in Tønesberg and later studied graphic design at the University of Oslo, says Meduza.

After his studies, Petrovski worked in a tattoo shop in Oslo, which attracted the attention of the police and the Norwegian press as a gathering place for far-right movements in 2010. The police confiscated a small number of weapons and forged documents from the shop.

In 2016, shortly after returning from eastern Ukraine, Norway deported the then 29-year-old Petrovski, who was considered a threat to national security. He was also suspected of having connections to extreme right-wing movements.

Before his deportation at the beginning of 2016, Petrovski had time to participate in the activities of the street patrol organization Soldiers of Odin in Norway.

In an interview with Meduza, Petrovski criticized Norwegians for not daring to call themselves patriotic. According to him, Norwegian society is based on “hyper-tolerance”, which is an obstacle to the nation’s identity.

“In Russia, it’s quite common to call yourself a nationalist,” Petrovski told Meduza.

From Rusich came a sharp expression of support for Torden shortly after his arrest came to light in Finland.

Rusiš threatened to stop his participation in the battles on the Russian side if Russia does not help in freeing “Slav”.

“If the state can’t defend its citizens, why do the citizens defend the state?”, the group asked on its Telegram channel on Saturday.

One the fact that caused confusion is Torden’s place of birth.

According to Russian sources, he was born in 1987 in Irkutsk, southern Siberia, from where he moved with his mother to St. Petersburg, then Leningrad, after his parents’ divorce.

In the documents of the district court of Eastern Uusimaa, Leningrad is indicated as the place of birth. Possibly there he became Voislav Torden.

From Saturday’s press release of the Russian embassy in Finland on the Telegram channel, it appears that the embassy had only received information from the Finnish police this week that Torden was previously known as Petrovski.

At the same time, the embassy confirmed that Russian citizen V. I. Torden had been arrested on his way to Nice at Helsinki-Vantaa airport on July 20 due to an entry violation.

The mission also explained its own actions. Initially, Torden was placed in custody, where he can freely use the phone. However, there was no contact with the embassy that would have enabled consular assistance.

Torden contacted the Russian embassy only on Wednesday, when the Finnish police had announced the transfer to prison. A meeting with the representative of the embassy is planned in the next few days.