because of his request in 1980 at age 12 to remain in the United States permanently after announcing that he didn't want to return with his parents to what was then Soviet Ukraine, and was the subject of a five-year struggle between U.S. and Soviet courts over his fate, which was decided in his favor in 1985 when Walter turned 18 that October 3 and was no longer a juvenile and thus no longer required to return to the Soviet Union if he didn't want to.

Also in the 1980s, Estonian