ST. PETERSBURG, October 23 (RIA Novosti) - A Finnish national at the center of a tug-of-love dispute with a Russian national has been charged with illegally taking his son across the Russian border, prosecutors said on Friday.

Paavo Salonen has been charged with illegally taking his son Anton to Finland with the help of a Finnish diplomat in April. The boy has joint Finnish-Russian citizenship. His mother, Rimma Salonen, was earlier this month given an 18-month suspended sentence for illegally taking Anton out of the country last year.

On April 12 this year, Salonen took Anton out of Russia with the help of St. Petersburg-based Finnish diplomat Simo Pietilainen, who drove through the Russian-Finnish border with the 6-year-old boy in the trunk of his vehicle. The incident sparked a diplomatic row between Russia and Finland.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later protested to his Finnish counterpart, Alexander Stubb, over the incident, and Pietilainen was declared persona non grata in Russia.

According to information from the Prosecutor General's Office, Salonen attempted to take his son across the border on April 4, but border guards refused to allow the child to cross and the two returned to St. Petersburg.