A member of the Russian parliament has adopted a 10-month-old child that had been abducted from the Ukrainian city of Kherson, changing the child's name and surname. Ukraine has appealed to international organisations to help bring the child back to Ukraine.
Ukraine's Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets confirmed media reports revealing that a Russian lawmaker's family had illegally adopted a Ukrainian child abducted from a children's home in Kherson and changed her identity.
A two-year-old girl taken from a Kherson children’s home in 2022 has been adopted by a political ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to documents obtained by the BBC. The BBC accessed adoption records and a birth record showing Margarita Propenko was renamed Marina Mironova, with A Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov and his wife Inna Varlamova listed as her parents. The Geneva Convention bans the unnecessary deportation of civilians and changing a child’s family status, making the removal of children from occupied regions of Ukraine and their adoption possible war crimes. Varlamova, identifying herself as “the head of children’s affairs from Moscow,” visited the Kherson children’s hospital in August 2022, where 10-month-old Margarita was being treated for bronchitis. Sources told the BBC that, shortly after the visit, Margarita was sent back to the children’s home where she had lived after being given up by her mother shortly after birth, picked up