(Reuters) – The head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said on Saturday that British travel blogger and YouTuber Benjamin Rich who specializes in remote and sometimes dangerous parts of the world has been arrested at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Dmitry Rogozin said in an online post that Rich – whose channel Bald and Bankrupt has 3.53 million followers – and Alina Tsiliuba are being held near one of the Baikonur launch pads, which Russia leases from Kazakhstan.
Rogozin, who posted photos of Rich’s visa and Tsiliuba’s passport, said local authorities were determining the “exact level of involvement in illegal activities” by the couple. In some of Rich’s videos, a woman named Alina appears, but it was not immediately clear if she and Tsiliuba were the same person.
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The latest video clip was filmed on Reach channel in Syria and published on April 24. In an Instagram post last week, Rich said “suntan and returned to a country with Soviet mosaics” but did not specify where he was.
In London, the British Foreign Office had no immediate comment.
Baikonur, which was once a closed Soviet city, is now open to tourists who apply for permission from Roscosmos. It is located in the steppes about 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) southwest of the Kazakh capital, Nur-Sultan.
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(Reporting by David Leungren) Editing by Matthew Lewis
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