Putin’s office says not dealing with Sapega’s extradition to Russia

April 17, BPN. Dmitry Perskov, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin, has said the president’s office is not dealing with the extradition of Russian national Sofya Sapega from Belarus to Russia.

“This is not an issue for the president’s administration. We are not directly involved in it,” he told reporters in Moscow on April 17, as quoted by TASS.

On April 14, the media reported that the Belarusian Prosecutor General’s Office granted Sapega’s petition to be extradited to serve her six-year sentence in Russia.

“The damage caused by Sofya Sapega’s illegal actions has been fully compensated,” the prosecutors said.

Sapega, an alleged former administrator of a Belarusian opposition media outlet in the Telegram messenger application, would reportedly be handed over to Russia when Belarus receives guarantees that the Belarusian court’s ruling is to be enforced.

On April 10, the Russian consul visited Sapega in prison and received her formal consent to the extradition.

In May 2021, Belarus forced a Ryanair flight to land in Minsk in order to, as human rights activists said, arrest opposition journalist Raman Pratasievič, traveling from Athens to Vilnius with his then-friend Sapega.

In May 2022 the Hrodna Regional Court found Sapega guilty of incitement to hatred and illegal handling of personal data.

In March 2023 the Belarusian Committee for State Security (KGB) put the woman on the list of people it said were involved in terrorism.