Families urge Russia to return deported Ukraine kids

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, listens to Sergey Mironov, 70, the leader of political party A Just Russia in Moscow, Russia, on Feb. 14, 2023. A Russian lawmaker and staunch supporter of President Vladimir Putin, Mironov has denied media allegations that he adopted a 2-year-old girl who was seized from a Ukrainian children's home and changed her name in Russia. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

Several families of Ukrainian children forcibly deported to Russia on Monday sounded the alarm about their fate, saying all contact had been cut off, as they called for international support.

During a rare news conference in Paris, Darina Repina, the legal guardian of two children who were forcibly taken to Russia after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, said Russian authorities were ignoring all requests to facilitate the return of the children.

“There’s no chance of being heard by them,” Repina told journalists at an event organized by the Emile Foundation, an organization that has been working to bring Ukrainian children home.

Margarita Prokopenko was 10 months old when she and her brother Maksym were forcibly taken from their orphanage when the southern city of Kherson was occupied in 2022.

The children were separated.

Maksym, six, is now in a Russian orphanage, while Margarita was adopted by the family of Sergei Mironov, a top ally of President Vladimir Putin, said Repina.

She said that Russian authorities had sought to give the little girl a new identity, adding she feared she might never get her back.

“They changed the child’s last name and first name, they changed absolutely everything,” Repina said.

Mironov, the leader of a pro-Kremlin party, has denied adopting Margarita Prokopenko, saying in a social media post in 2023 that “the Ukrainian special services and their Western supervisors” were seeking to discredit him.

Repina is raising the pair’s elder sister, and hopes that one day the family will be reunited.

Repina had been preparing to bring the younger two home when Russia invaded, she said. The children’s mother has since been stripped of parental rights.

Lyubov Burina’s grandchildren, Angelina and Yevhen, were deported to Russia following the start of the Russian invasion, after they were temporarily placed in an orphanage in Kherson due to a family crisis. They were aged three and one when they were taken, she said.

All her efforts to track down her grandchildren have proved unsuccessful. According to the latest information, the children are in Simferopol in Russian-annexed Crimea, she said.

“We contacted both the police and social services,” said the 55-year-old.

According to Kyiv, since the invasion of Ukraine, nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territories, although this number could be higher.

Ukraine has made the issue of the abducted children a diplomatic priority.

But Mariam Lambert, co-founder of the Emile Foundation, said the relatives and legal guardians of such children were often excluded from international discussions on their fate.

The subject, she added, has become too politicized.

“So we decided to go public,” she said.

“Celebrities are talking about this, politicians are talking about this, but not the mothers,” she told AFP. “It’s time to give them a voice.”

Lambert said that her organization has helped bring 48 children back to Ukraine.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, over the allegations of child abductions.

Russia has said it moved some Ukrainian children from their houses or orphanages for protection due to the threat of hostilities.

According to Lambert, the Russian authorities say “these children have no families and so we are giving them a good life here in Russia”.

She said such a narrative was “absolutely false” and all children deported to Russia had Ukrainian relatives.

“Every child in these orphanages has a mother, a grandmother, a sister, or a father,” she said.

Lambert said that while there was no direct contact between her organization and the Russian government, she has tried to secure the help of third countries which have been in touch with Moscow including the United States, Slovakia and Brazil.