Case filed over Kherson Ukrainian children deportation, State Duma deputy involved

According to Ukrinform, this was reported by the Office of the Prosecutor General.

As part of documenting this cynical war crime, the Office of the Prosecutor General and the Security Service of Ukraine established the circumstances, detailed route, and all those involved in the deportation of two young children from Ukraine to the Russian Federation, as well as the forced transfer of 46 other children to the temporarily occupied territory of the Crimean peninsula. These are children with special status who were raised in the Kherson Regional Children's Home.

Among the organizers and perpetrators of the crime are a deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Russian-appointed “Minister of Health of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea” and his deputy, the head of the “Department of Health of the Occupied Kherson Region,” and the acting chief physician of the “Kherson Regional Children's Home.”

They are subject to sanctions in Ukraine for committing war crimes against Ukrainian children.

Currently, the indictment against these individuals has been sent to court by juvenile prosecutors from the Office of the Prosecutor General. Earlier in this case, materials were transferred regarding two other individuals close to the Russian president: a deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, who is a confidante of the leader of the Fair Russia party, and the wife of the leader of that party.

"During the pre-trial investigation, it was established that at the end of August 2022, the State Duma deputy and her accomplice arrived in the temporarily occupied city of Kherson under the guise of an official visit. Together with the head of the occupation “Department of Health” and the director of the children's home, they inspected the children and organized the deportation of two children — an 11-month-old girl and an almost two-year-old boy. Of the two, only the girl had been deprived of parental care; the boy was in the facility temporarily due to difficult family circumstances," the report said.

To ensure the smooth transfer of these two children to Russia, local officials prepared documents stating that the accompanying persons were the aforementioned Russian citizens.

The boy and girl were illegally taken to Moscow under the pretext of undergoing additional examination and treatment, although, as established by the investigation, they did not need it due to their health condition. Therefore, there were no objective reasons for their deportation to Russia.

According to the investigation, the Ukrainian children were issued Russian-style birth certificates. Subsequently, the leader of the Fair Russia party and his wife adopted one child and changed her personal data, except for her date of birth. The boy's whereabouts are currently unknown — after his deportation, he was handed over to the Russian child welfare authorities due to psychological developmental disorders.

In addition, in October 2022, another 46 children aged from birth to 5 years were taken from the Kherson Regional Children's Home. To this end, the “Minister of Health of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea” and his deputy arrived in the captured city and organized two buses marked with the letter Z and 11 emergency medical vehicles.

Accompanied by Russian military personnel, a deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation also arrived and began to oversee the process of placing the children on the buses.

The defendants personally accompanied their transfer to the Yalynka children's facility, which is controlled by the “Ministry of Health of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.”

Later, the Russian Federation's Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights arrived at the facility and noted that her office would help place the children in Russian foster families. The profiles of some of the children appeared on the Moscow Region government's adoption website, usynovite.mosreg.ru.

The actions of the defendants are classified under Part 2 of Article 28 and Part 1 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine as violations of the laws and customs of war.

As reported by Ukrinform, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law amending the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which increases Russia's responsibility for the abduction of Ukrainian children.

Illustrative photo: Freepik/jcomp