"Complicated family dynamic": Russian children's rights commissioner recounts how she "re-educated" boy abducted from Mariupol

Maria Lvova-Belova, Russian Children's Rights Commissioner, has boasted about how she "re-educated" her so-called adopted son Pylyp, a Ukrainian teenager abducted from Mariupol.

According to Lvova-Belova, the boy "hated Russia and sang Ukrainian songs", but after living with her family "his mindset changed".

Source: Lvova-Belova in an interview with Russian propagandists, excerpts of which were shared by journalist Denys Kazanskyi

Details: In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Lvova-Belova for the deportation of Ukrainian children from occupied territories.

"They're still pushing their myth that we forcibly remove children, change their identity, and re-educate them in Russian patriotism.

[Lvova-Belova's adoption of Pylyp] was one of the reasons for the arrest warrant. Because, according to them, I 'abducted' a Mariupol child and took him into my family – such audacity on my part…" she claimed.

Lvova-Belova then described the boy's so-called rehabilitation.

She said the teenager "complicated the family atmosphere" after suffering post-traumatic stress from the bombardments in Mariupol and had "a special attitude toward Russia" supposedly taught in Ukrainian schools.

"He always told me: 'I love you, you're my mother. But everything else – Moscow, Russia – annoys me.' He was constantly having fits," the Russian ombudswoman said.

She claimed she overcame this behaviour "with love".

"He kept visiting pro-Ukrainian websites, reading all that propaganda, even while living with my family. When I saw that, I told him: 'You're already in Russia; it's time to change your attitude'," Lvova-Belova said.

According to Lvova-Belova, Pylyp used to say he loved Ukraine and sang Ukrainian songs, but "his consciousness gradually began to change" and he supposedly moved away from "Ukrainian propaganda".

She insists the boy now does not want to return to Ukraine, occasionally visiting Mariupol but quickly returning to Moscow.

Background:

• In August 2022, Lvova-Belova announced she had become the foster mother of a teenager taken from Ukraine. He and about 30 other Mariupol children had been transported to a sanatorium in Moscow Oblast.
• In 2023, she said that when Pylyp first joined her family, he would chase her younger children shouting, "I'll eat you, little Moskal," but later "fell in love" with her and started calling her "mum".
• According to the Skhemy investigative project, before Russia's full-scale invasion, the boy lived with his late mother's former husband and his new wife. His biological mother died in 2017.
• This year, Pylyp turned 18.

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