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Alexei Moskalev, a former Russian political prisoner convicted after his daughter drew an antiwar picture at school, arrived in Paris on March 11 with his daughter, Masha (Maria). They are now under France’s humanitarian protection, The Insider has learned.
A day earlier, the Moskalevs received a “laissez-passer,” a travel document that allows entry to a country without a foreign passport. The human rights initiative inTransit said they initially spent more than a year trying to obtain German humanitarian visas, but in August 2025 Berlin effectively froze the program.
Masha is under increased risk of a criminal prosecution in Russia due to actions that the authorities could characterize as “discrediting” the Russian army — a statute frequently used by the Russian state to persecute citizens who make their anti-war views public. In late December, officials involved in matters of guardianship began looking for Masha, began putting pressure on her relatives who remained in Russia. By then, she and her father were already in Armenia.
In December 2025, both father and daughter applied for a French humanitarian visa, which was approved in February.
The Moskalev family drew the attention of Russia’s security services in 2022 after Maria drew an antiwar picture during an art class in school. Later, a criminal case was opened against her father, Alexei, over an Odnoklassniki social media post about the killing of civilians in Bucha. He was placed under house arrest, while she was sent to a rehabilitation center. Maria was later handed over to her mother, with whom she had not lived and had not communicated for seven years.
In March 2023, Alexei Moskalev was sentenced in absentia to two years in prison after escaping from house arrest. However, he was taken into custody — and beaten — by Belarusian security officers after making his way to Minsk. He was returned to the Tula region of Russia, where an appeals court later reduced his sentence by two months. Moskalev was released from prison in October 2024.