Alexei and Masha Moskaleva have received political asylum in France, the father and daughter told the human rights organization inTransit, which assisted them.
The Moskalevs arrived in France on humanitarian visas in March 2026. They received French humanitarian visas on March 10 and flew to Paris from Yerevan, where they had been living, the following day.
The family decided not to return to Russia after Alexei was released from a penal colony in October 2024. He had served one year and ten months of a two-year sentence for “discrediting” the Russian military, convicted over comments he made on the social network Odnoklassniki. The authorities’ attention to the family from the Tula region was first drawn by Masha’s anti-war drawing in an art class at school.
After his release, Federal Security Service (FSB) officers threatened Moskalev that they would not leave him alone, human rights activists said. On October 24, 2024, father and daughter left for Armenia.
The Moskalevs had tried to obtain humanitarian visas from Germany, but in August 2025 Berlin effectively suspended the issuance of such documents. Around the same time, Russian child welfare authorities began searching for Masha because of her anti-war posts on Telegram. The family did not wait for Germany’s decision and turned to France for help.