Andrei Pivovarov was escorted off an aircraft belonging to Polish national carrier LOT on Monday evening. Pivovarov is an ex-director of Open Russia, a group linked to exiled former oil tycoon and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Pivovarov's plane was turned back at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport before it took off, and finally departed an hour and a half late, without him on board, Polish state news agency PAP reported. LOT said the plane had been ordered to turn back as it was taxiing.
Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk said this was not the first instance of "irregular behaviour" by his country's eastern neighbors.
"As we can see, the standards of the civilized world do not apply there. Such activities are not undertaken in democratic countries," he added.
Wawrzyk said Poland needed to check whether the incident at the St. Petersburg airport was "just a Russian mess, or maybe some other reasons are at the root of this."
Open Russia said last week it had decided to end its operations in Russia to protect its members from the risk of being jailed, the Reuters news agency reported.
Russia declared the London-based group "undesirable" in 2017, effectively banning its activities. Its allies in Russia continued their activism under the same name, but as a separate legal entity to try to protect themselves from prosecution, Reuters added.
(pk)
Source: IAR/PAP/Reuters