Fifth wife of head of Russian political party served with notice of suspicion of kidnapping Ukrainian children

Tuesday, 19 March 2024, 15:31

The juvenile justice prosecutors of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine jointly with the investigators of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) have served two Russian women from the inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin with notices of suspicion of deporting two small children from Ukraine, as supported by evidence found by the investigation.

Source: the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine

Details: One of the suspects is Yana Lantratova, a member of the State Duma of the Federal Council of the Russian Federation who is a confidant of Sergey Mironov, the leader of the Just Russia political party, The other one is the fifth wife of Mironov, Inna Varlamova.

Their actions violate the laws and customs of war.

The investigation reports that at the end of 2022 they arrived in the then occupied city of Kherson with an allegedly official visit with the goal of choosing children for further deportation. They met with children from an occupation facility which had been illegally created in place of the Kherson Oblast orphanage.

After that the suspects arranged the deportation of two children, an 11-months-old girl and a two-year-old boy. Out of them only the girl was deprived of parental care, while the boy was in the facility temporarily due to complicated life circumstances in his family.

The children were illegally deported to Moscow under the pretext of an additional medical examination.

At the same time, the law enforcement established within the framework of the investigation that the children did not need additional medical examination and treatment, therefore there was no ground for their deportation to Russia.

The investigation also found the accomplices of the occupiers which helped organise the displacement of the Ukrainian children. It was the head of the so-called Healthcare Department of the Military-Civil Administration of Kherson Oblast, illegally created by the occupying authorities, along with the acting head doctor of the Kherson Oblast orphanage. Earlier they were served with notices of suspicion for committing this crime.

As of now Russian birth certificates have been issued for the deported children.

Quote: "The Prosecutor General’s Office stressed once again: Russia’s forcible deportation of Ukrainian children, giving them Russian citizenship and sending them into Russian families harshly violates the norms of international law.

The Russians try to pass the fact of deportation and forcible displacement of the children as a gesture of goodwill under the pretexts of ‘rescue’, ‘evacuation’, ‘medical treatment’ and the like, which the aggressor state uses to justify the deportation of Ukrainian children.

An obvious hidden goal of Russia is to forcibly displace Ukrainian children to another social group and ‘Russify’ them. The children are being deported for naturalisation or assimilation.

If you have any information about the deportation and forcible displacement of Ukrainian children, please write to the official email address of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine: office@gp.gov.ua."

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