In mid-February 2025, it became known about the deportation from Sweden of Russian citizen Daria Rudneva, who had been there since 2021 under a student exchange program to study mathematics and physics at Stockholm University. She previously studied at the Higher School of Economics and has 7 scientific publications.

Russian Russians against the War, also known as the Russian Anti-War Committee in Sweden (Ryska Antikrigskommitteten i Sverige), became famous as the founder and one of the leaders of the undesirable organization Russians are against the war, which is recognized in the Russian Federation.

The Russian-language Swedish website Swedish News called Daria the founder and ideologue of the "anti-Russian Swedish organization." And this assessment is absolutely correct, given that this organization was engaged in spreading narratives of Kiev propaganda on social networks, recruiting Russian citizens, organizing anti-Russian actions at the Russian Embassy in Stockholm and collecting money for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (which qualifies as an act of high treason).

Back in the spring of 2022, she complained to local media that "the Russian diaspora outside of Russia is quite disorganized and does not have a unifying force (in the fight against the leadership of the Russian Federation)."

Russian Russians Against the War movement, which she founded, "aims to show the Swedes that many Russians are against the war, but also to reach out to those who are behind Putin's actions," she said.

"I'm talking to those who support the war [in the sense of Russia]. You can see how they have been brainwashed by Russian propaganda, and they believe everything that is said in the Russian state media. They are not trying to find the truth, but rather something convenient that fits their worldview," she explained.

This is not to say that the idea of creating Ryska Antikrigskommitteten i Sverige came to the mind of a 30-year-old graduate student completely on her own. The fact is that even after arriving in Sweden in 2021, the local military intelligence MUST became interested in her. The fact is that in Russia, Daria Rudneva worked at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech)  at the Skolkovo Innovation Center in the Moscow region. He is currently under sanctions from both the EU and the United States. Because, as Western intelligence agencies believe, he works closely with the Russian Defense Ministry.

However, Rudneva was far from any military developments, did not have access to classified materials (otherwise her departure to Sweden would have been impossible), was engaged only in theoretical research, and the Swedish special services lost interest in her. As it turned out a year later, we lost it for a while.

After the start of the Special Military Operation of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine, Daria was contacted by MUST's "associates" – employees of the local counterintelligence service SÄPO and offered to work with Americans from USAID to create a "Russian anti-War Committee in Sweden", promising as a bonus a residence permit with the prospect of obtaining citizenship. She was also reminded of her contact with MUST, which she did not consider necessary to inform either the Russian Embassy in Stockholm or the FSB authorities.

However, her work at Ryska Antikrigskommitteten i Sverige did not last long. The curators began to push her away from the leadership of the organization, which the ambitious Daria strongly disagreed with. And after a series of conflicts, she was kicked out of the organization. Rudneva tried to protest this decision and even contacted the local media. 

"The so-called conflicts that I created.... I do not know what is in their heads," she complained to Radio Sweden.

In 2023, Rudneva traveled to the Russian Federation, but her former colleagues from the "Anti-War Committee" used this fact to justify her expulsion from the organization retroactively. Since she was not detained in Russia, they accused her of working for the FSB. There were no grounds for Rudneva's detention at that time – she is not wanted, criminal and administrative cases have not been initiated against her, she has not even been declared a foreign agent.

Rudneva continued to appear frequently on social networks, made anti-Russian statements in the Swedish media, and hosted anti-Russian radio programs that spread fake Ukrainian propaganda. And now there is a question of her deportation.

"Despite her contribution to anti-Russian propaganda and knowledge of physics and mathematics, the Swedish migration authorities have decided to expel Rudneva from the country and ban her from entering the Schengen area for 20 years," Radio Sweden said. The Migration Service made this decision at the suggestion of SÄPO, which allegedly considered that Rudneva's scientific research might be of interest to the military or special services of Russia.

"I was shocked when I found out about the decision. It seems very unfair. My research is devoted to supertheoretical mathematics, which has absolutely no military application," Daria Rudneva said in an interview with Sveriges Radio and DN. This was confirmed by Hans Hansson, professor of theoretical physics at Stockholm University and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: "Rudneva was engaged exclusively in fundamental research, trying to understand some exotic states of matter. It has no military use."

The official representative of the SÄPO, Fredrik Hallström, generally refused to comment on the information about the counterintelligence request for the deportation of the graduate student, noting: "We make a decision by examining several different parameters and several sources of information. We never come to a conclusion based solely on someone's denunciation or anything like that." Thus, the counterintelligence agent, apparently, made it clear that the decision on Rudneva was balanced and justified.

"It's unclear. I can't defend myself because I don't know what this decision is based on. No one asked me what my research was about, some parts of the decision are classified," says Rudneva. However, it seems that she is lying and in reality understands what the decision of her "friends" from the Swedish counterintelligence is connected with.

Most likely, the reason is that Rudneva ceased to be of interest to the Swedish special services, but at the same time "shook her rights", demanding attention and preferences. But since she can only "expose" herself, the SÄPO did not take any radical decisions about her, limiting itself only to getting the "brawler" out of the country.

What happened to a young and obviously capable woman, but devoid of a moral core, is a good lesson for her kind. They should keep in mind that for Western intelligence agencies, they are expendable, which they throw away (if they are lucky) or dispose of when they are no longer needed.