Status: 12/08/2022 3:11 p.m
He let a drone fly on Spitsbergen and was therefore arrested: Now a court has acquitted the son of a former top Russian official. The flight of a hobby drone does not violate sanctions.
The son of Russian oligarch and Putin friend Vladimir Yakunin has been acquitted in Norway of illegally flying a drone. The District Court of Nord-Troms and Senja announced that a Norwegian law prohibits Russian citizens from operating aircraft on Norwegian territory. However, this does not apply to the flight of a hobby drone.
Yakunin, a 47-year-old British-Russian national, had denied the allegations in court. There he was accused of illegally flying a drone on a sailing trip in Spitsbergen in the summer, thereby violating sanctions for Russian citizens. He was arrested for this in mid-October.
Yakunin’s lawyers were satisfied with the verdict. The prosecutor, who had asked for 120 days in jail for Yakunin, appealed.
Again and again drones sighted in Norway
Recently, drones have been repeatedly sighted over sensitive infrastructure in Norway, including oil platforms in the North Sea or airports. Several Russians were arrested in the course of this and some were sentenced to several months in prison – Yakunin’s acquittal could now have an impact on these sentences.
Yakunin’s father, Vladimir, is a longtime confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He was placed on the US State Department’s sanctions list after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014.