Russia’s former Ombudsman for Children’s Rights Astakhov denied entry to Georgia

Pavel Astakhov, the former Ombudsman for Children’s Rights under the President of Russia, on August 25 was denied entry into Georgia, the current lawyer and TV host backing Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, claimed earlier this week. 

 

Expressing his indignation, Astakhov, who served in the official post in 2016, claimed he had visited Armenia with a crew to shoot material for the film about “Noah’s Ark” and the flood in the country. 

 

“We crossed the Armenia-Georgia border to leave for Turkey, to Ararat, where filming is also planned, but Georgian border guards illegally and unjustifiably detained us for almost seven hours and finally denied our entry”, he said, calling the move a “provocation” and “arbitrariness”.

 

Earlier, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, Astarkhov was in the territory of Ukraine occupied by Russia, where he shot a documentary “Miracle on the front, or there are no atheists in the trenches”.

 

Astakhov resigned from the position of Children’s Ombudsman in 2016 after the tragedy in the village of Siamozerosh, Privolzhsky district of the Republic of Karelia, when children were killed by a storm. The children’s Ombudsman asked the girls who survived the storm whether they swam well. 

 

Last year, the Saratov court sentenced his son Anton to 3.5 years in prison for large-scale fraud.