Ukrainian baby “secretly adopted” by Putin ally

Sergei Mironov, a Putinally and leader of a state-approved “oppositional” Russian political party, adopted a two-year-old girl abducted from a children’s home in occupied Kherson in 2022, BBC Panorama reports. Ten-month-old Margarita Prokopenko, seen in a hospital by Mironov’s wife Inna Varlamova, was collected from the children’s home, transferred to Moscow and secretly adopted by the Mironovs. They renamed Prokopenko Marina Mironova and changed her birthplace to Podolsk, Moscow region. By the Geneva Convention, it is unlawful to deport civilians in times of war and to change a child’s family status, unless it’s temporary and essential for security or imperative for military reasons (in which case it still cannot be done by the aggressor country). Putin and his children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, were indicted by the ICC earlier this year for the illegal deportation of hundreds of Ukrainian children from orphanages and children’s homes.