A 2-year-old girl who was seized from a Ukrainian orphanage was adopted by a Putin ally: BBC

• Russian politician Sergey Mironov adopted a Ukrainian child, reports say.
• The child was stolen from a Ukrainian orphanage, according to the BBC.

A political ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin adopted a girl who was taken from an orphanage in occupied Ukraine, according to a BBC investigation.

Sergey Mironov, leader of the Just Russia political party, adopted the girl and changed her name after she was taken from a children's home in the occupied Kherson Oblast, reported BBC News.

Mironov denied the accusations, describing them in a statement to Business Insider as "fake," and blaming them on "Ukrainian special services and their Western curators."

According to the report, Mironov's wife, Inna Varlamova, visited Kherson in August 2022, and saw a 10-month-old child, Margarita Prokopenko, in a children's hospital.

Later, the report said, Russian men, some in military fatigues, came and took Prokopenko from the children's home where she lived and deported her to Russia, with the rest of the children in the orphanage deported weeks later.

According to documents obtained by the publication, Mironov and his wife changed the girl's name to Marina Sergeevna Mironova, and her place of birth from Kherson to Podolsk, near Moscow.

The report said that Prokopenko's biological mother had given up custody after her birth, and her father's whereabouts are unknown.

Under international law, the removal of children from occupied territory and their adoption are considered to be war crimes.

According to the Ukrainian government, around 20,000 children have been taken by Russian authorities since the war began. The International Criminal Court in the Hague earlier this year issued arrest warrants for Putin and his children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova over the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Russia has claimed it is removing the children to Russia for their safety.