Featured Image Credit: CEN
Topics: Russia, Ukraine, World News, Vladimir Putin
Hannah Smith
Two Russian activists have been arrested after breaking into a French villa owned by President Vladimir Putin's former son-in-law and changing the locks.
Pierre Haffner and Sergey Saveliev said that they were occupying the villa in Biarritz - a coastal resort popular with Russian oligarchs - and wanted local authorities to allow them to use the property to house Ukrainian refugees.
A photo posted to social media showed one of the activists waving a Ukrainian flag from the balcony of the luxury home, with Haffner writing that they had renamed the property 'Villa Ukraine.'
The villa, which sits on the beachfront looking onto the Bay of Biscay, is understood to belong to Kirill Shamalov, a Russian businessman who was previously married to Putin's daughter Katerina Tikhonova.
Shamalov became Russia's youngest billionaire shortly after his marriage to Tikhonova in 2013, and is the son of Nikolai Shamalov, a close confidant of Putin.
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The Guardian reports that, despite changing the locks, the pair's occupation of the villa was short lived, with police breaking down the door and arresting the two activists, who are currently in custody.
Speaking to the paper, exiled Russian human rights campaigner Vladimir Osechkin called upon the French authorities to release the pair.
He said: 'This isn’t fair. This isn’t justice. My friends were not doing any damage to this property, they were preparing it so that refugees from the war in Ukraine, including children, could stay there.
'That’s all they were doing.'
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Meanwhile, in London, separate group of squatters said on Monday, March 14 they had occupied a Belgravia mansion belonging to sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, similarly claiming they planned to open up the property to Ukrainian refugees.
'You occupy Ukraine, we occupy you,' the squatters said, claiming their actions were not 'ordinary squatting' but 'property liberation.'
'This mansion will serve as a centre for refugee support for Ukrainians and people of all nations and ethnicities,' said the group, which consists of anarchist Eastern European activists who say they took over the building 'to show solidarity with the people of Ukraine' and urged others to 'squat oligarchs' properties everywhere.
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The property quickly became the scene of heavy police presence, with Vice reporting officers entered the residence at around 1.30pm to evict those inside the building.
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