Overview

• Russian lawmaker Sergey Mironov, a staunch supporter of President Vladimir Putin, has denied allegations that he adopted a 2-year-old girl who was taken from a Ukrainian children's home and had her name changed in Russia.
• The allegations were made by the BBC and independent Russian news outlet Important Stories, which published an investigation stating that Mironov's wife, Inna Varlamova, visited the child in a children's home in Kherson, Ukraine, before a group of Russian men removed the child and took her to Russia.
• The investigation also cited a birth record created several months later that listed Mironov and Varlamova as the parents of a child named Marina, born on the same date as the missing child, Margarita Prokopenko.
• Ukrainian authorities estimate that around 20,000 children have been sent out of the country without their parents' knowledge or under false pretenses since Russia invaded in February 2022.
• The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for children’s rights in Putin’s office, accusing them of committing war crimes through their involvement in the abduction of children from Ukraine.