ST. PETERSBURG, October 26 - RAPSI. The Finnish authorities have released Russian citizen Anastasia Zavgorodnyaya's four kids who were sent to an orphanage due to suspicions of child abuse, Finnish human rights activist Johan Backman told RIA Novosti on Thursday.

Media earlier reported that the Finnish social services had taken 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.

Several weeks ago, 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 the social services.

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

Baeckman said no charges have been brought against Zavgorodnyaya, stressing that the decision to take the children away was made based on the eldest daughter's allegation that she had been "spanked."

Zavgorodnyaya had been allowed to live with her children in a social services security center.

On Wednesday, activists held a rally near the Finnish Embassy in St. Petersburg to support Russians whose children, born into mixed marriages, have been taken away by the Finnish social services.

After a new law came into effect in Finland in mid-2008 stating that children should be taken from their families immediately in situations when abuse is suspected, many such cases have arisen.

Russian-Finnish families such as 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 have 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.

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.