Christian Russian family seek sanctuary
in Poland to escape Sweden


The Ethnic-European
April 5, 2019
Mike Walsh


The Swedish social services’ decision to place three Christian girls in a Muslim family has resulted in an international scandal, involving Poland. After the Swedish social services attempted to place Denis Lisov’s three children with a Muslim foster family, the Russian father took his daughters and fled Sweden, unleashing a thriller-like sequence of events.

Denis Lisov came to Sweden seven years ago. In 2017 his wife fell ill, whereupon social services decided to take away his children on the grounds, that he had no full employment and was therefore unable to take care of them. Instead, they were placed with a Muslim family. Lisov’s family formally retained the custody of the children, but only had the right to see them six hours a week, the Swedish news outlet\ Samhällsnytt reported.

According to Babken Khanzadyan, who represents the Lisovs, they weren’t given any opportunity to defend their rights and the girls didn’t want to stay there. After his daughters had spent over a year with the Muslim family, living about 200 miles from their real father, Denis had had enough.

He took his daughters and decided to return to Russia. However, he was stopped at Warsaw airport, after Swedish authorities reported his daughters missing. Now he has applied for asylum in Poland instead.

A Polish court ruled, that the Swedish social service had violated an EU convention, that forbids the placement of children in foreign cultural environments. The court also noted, that Lisov’s paternity rights had not been revoked, which is why the children could and should stay with their father.

“The children have a very strong bond with the father and when I talked to them, they told me, that they want to stay with their father and love him and do not want to be separated from him”, judge Janeta Seliga-Kaczmarek said.

According to Lisov, the youngest girls didn’t understand anything, but the eldest one had problems adapting to the harsh environment of the Muslim family. Their lawyer Bartosz Lewandowski has tweeted, that the family was happy and rested after the first night spent on their own.

According to Lewandowski, the Muslim foster father also appeared in the Polish court and admitted, that his visit to Poland had been paid in full by the Swedish social services. Horrifyingly, a representative of the Swedish social services soon afterwards arrived to pick up the three desperate girls, but was stopped by the police. He told them something in Swedish, which nobody understood.

“Three Russian girls were to be illegally taken away from their father by Swedish officials on Polish soil”, lawyer Jerzy Kwaśniewski tweeted.

“Poland is a beautiful country. It is blossoming in my eyes, because here I can finally be with Dad”, Sofia Lisova, Denis’s eldest daughter said after the court’s verdict, as quoted by Artur Stelmasiak, the editor of the Catholic weekly Niedziela. The court’s actions were also praised by Poland’s authorities.

“The court has decided, that the children stay with their father. Well done the police and the border police”, Polish Interior Minister Joachim Brudziński tweeted.

In Sweden the social services have the possibility of immediately taking children and young people up to the age of 19 by force. Why exactly the social services decided to take away Lisov’s daughters, remains unknown.