In the Tula region, social services dropped a claim to limit the rights of Masha Moskaleva’s parents

In the Tula region, the commission for minors in the city of Efremov abandoned the claim to limit the father and mother of schoolgirl Masha Moskaleva in parental rights. This is reported on the city administration website.

The press release quotes the chairman of the commission, Svetlana Davydova: “All this time we have been working with Masha’s relatives, especially with her mother. As a result, mom is now with Masha. They have a good relationship. Masha started studying again. Thus, today the reasons that were indicated in the claim for restriction of parents’ rights have been eliminated.”

The social services' request to waive the claims was sent to the court. According to the court file , it has not yet been considered; the next hearing on the claim will take place tomorrow, April 20.

The security forces drew attention to the Moskalev family in April 2022, when the father of sixth-grader Masha was called to school because of her anti-war drawing in an art lesson. Then 52-year-old Moskalev, who was raising his daughter alone, was fined because of a comment about the war (Part 1 of Article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses), and six months later a criminal case was opened against him because of a post about murders in Bucha (Part 1 of Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code ).

In March 2023, the man was placed under house arrest, and his daughter was taken to a shelter and refused to be given back to her father. Shortly before this, in February, the court received a lawsuit from social services to limit the parental rights of both the father and mother of the girl Olga Sitchikhina, who lived with a new family in another region.

Sitchikhin initially signed permission for the 13-year-old girl to remain in the orphanage. Children's Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova said that “[Masha’s] mother promised several times that she would come, but did not come, and does not maintain contact with the girl.”

Despite this, on April 5 the girl was released from the orphanage to her mother. The woman said that she would not forbid the girl to see her father, as he limited their communication, although she was going to “beat off her politics, anti-propaganda and drawings.”

Moskalev’s sentence was announced on March 28; he was sentenced to two years in a general regime colony. The Tula man was not present at the announcement because he escaped from house arrest. The next day he was detained in Minsk and soon transferred to Russia.