It turned out that the Finnish authorities had stumbled across the latest alias being used by Yan Petrovsky, a militia commander and a leader of Russia’s far-right who has been sanctioned by the US for his suspected involvement in war crimes in Ukraine.
The case deserves greater attention than it has so far received as Petrovsky embodies the transformation of Russia under Vladimir Putin into an expansionist, authoritarian state. The struggle to put Petrovsky on trial is also illustrative of the broader struggle between Ukraine and the European Union to reach a shared understanding of the threat posed by Russia’s imperial ambitions, and the steps needed to confront it.