Dmitry Valuev, president of Russian America for Democracy in Russia, tells the Times of London that he thinks two deportation flights to Russia via Egypt in June and August were “coordinated with the Russian authorities” and “The middlemen in the US immigration system and the Russian FSB could not talk to each other directly without approval from higher up. Someone gave that approval.”
Even better: The deportees’ asylum applications, listing the reasons why they were fleeing Russia, specifically the criticisms of dictator Vlad Putin’s regime, were handed over to Kremlin officials.