A Russian citizen has been detained in Kazakhstan after Moscow put him on an international wanted list after he condemned the invasion of Ukraine.
Yevgeny Nakaznenko, who has been living in Kazakhstan since 2007, was detained in Almaty while trying to board a flight to Istanbul on a business trip.
Nakaznenko runs a foreign language school in Kazakhstan.
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Moscow opened an investigation into Nakaznenko on charges of spreading “false” information about the Russian Army and "encouraging terrorism."
Russian President Vladimir Putin outlawed criticism of the war and the country's armed forces just weeks after he launched the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Hundreds of Russian citizens have been charged under the law, with many handed lengthy sentences.
In a video post on his Instagram account, the businessman -- who is of Ukrainian ethnicity -- condemned the war and voiced his opinion about Russian politics, although it is unclear if that was the post that triggered the arrest warrant.
A pro-Russian Kazakh blogger, Anton Budarova, who saw the video, called on Russian authorities to punish Nakaznenko, according to opposition journalist Yevgenia Baltatarova.
An Almaty court has placed Nakaznenko in pretrial detention until the end of October. He faces possible extradition to Russia.
OVD-Info, a human rights group, said Nakaznenko was unaware of the charges against him and was not trying to flee Kazakhstan.
Russia put Nakaznenko on its list of “terrorists and extremists” on August 8, by which time police had opened their case against him.
Nakaznenko is not the first Russian citizen detained by Kazakhstan at the request of Moscow for anti-war comments.
Tens of thousands of Russians have moved to Kazakhstan to avoid a so-called "partial military mobilization," which Putin announced in September 2022.
The Kazakh government under President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has been trying to maintain a careful balance between Russia on the one-hand and Ukraine and the West on the other since the start of the war.
While not openly condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Toqaev has publicly stated that his country would not recognize parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions occupied by Moscow's forces as Russian territory.