MOSCOW, November 8 - RAPSI. After Finnish social services recently returned Anastasia Zavgorodnyaya's children to her, the Russian citizen requested asylum from the Russian embassy in Helsinki, Alexander Lukashevich, the Foreign Ministry's official spokesperson, said.

"On November 7, Anastasia Zavgorodnyaya requested either a car for transport to Russia or asylum at the Russian embassy in Helsinki. She claims Finnish social services are determined to take her children away again," Lukashevich said at a press briefing on Thursday.

He added that Finnish social services assured Russia that it had no intention of taking Zavgodorodnyaya's children again.

Previously the media reported that Zavgorodnyaya would not be able to return to Russia since her family member's documents had vanished. After this the social services allegedly threatened to take custody of the children again. Now, the Russian citizen is hiding from Finnish authorities.

In early November, Finnish social services took Zavgorodnyaya's four children away from her on suspicion of child abuse. RIA Novosti reported that her parental rights had been deprived after her six-year-old daughter, Veronica, told her schoolteacher that she had been beaten.

Zavgorodnyaya's three children - Veronica and her two-year-old twins - were sent to an orphanage. Her newborn daughter, who was only a week old, was also taken by social services.

Both the Russian Foreign Ministry and Children's Rights Commissioner Pavel Astakhov recently became involved in the case.

Zavgorodnyaya had been allowed to live with her children in a social services security center. The Finnish authorities have released Zavgorodnyaya's four kids.

A new law came into effect in Finland in mid-2008 requiring that children be taken from their families immediately in situations of suspected abuse. As a result, many cases similar to Zavgorodnyaya's have arisen.

Other Russian-Finnish families including the Rantalas, the Salonens and the Putknonens, for example, have found themselves in similar circumstances.

The Salonen family's case was one of the first public scandals to break out over Russian-Finnish children.

After Rimma Salonen brought her son Anton to Russia, he was taken back to Finland in the trunk of a diplomat's car by his father Paavo Salonen and diplomat Simo Pietilainen, who escaped criminal liability in Finland. Rimma Salonen was deprived of her parental rights by a Finnish court and received a suspended sentence for abducting her son after her divorce from Paavo.

Children's rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov spared no effort in trying to help Salonen and her son, whose Russian citizenship has not been recognized by the Finish authorities. Paavo has taken Russia and Astakhov to the European Court of Human Rights in an effort to force them to stop commenting on Anton's case. Anton lives in Finland with his 70-year old father, who is his sole guardian.