State Duma deputy and Putin’s ally Sergei Mironov was involved in the kidnapping of Margarita Prokopenko and Ilya Vashchenko from an orphanage in the summer of 2022 during the occupation of Kherson.
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From the correspondence of Mironov’s wife, an employee of the State Duma apparatus Irina Varlamova, it follows that immediately after the abduction they ordered Varlamova’s eldest children to “keep everything secret,” TSN writes.
After Ilya received a complex medical diagnosis in Moscow, Mironov and Varlamova lost the boy, and now his whereabouts are unknown.
The hijacked Margarita Prokopenko, with a completely changed identity, now lives in the family of a Russian politician.
Earlier, the BBC reported that the leader of the A Just Russia party, Mironov, together with his wife Varlamova, recorded themselves as the parents of the girl, completely changed her name in the documents and indicated her place of birth in Russian Podolsk.
Varlamova’s correspondence was broken at TSN’s disposal. From it, according to the publication, it follows that the politician’s wife gave the girl a blood type test and was then glad that it matched Mironov’s blood type. Additionally, Varlamova and Mironov allegedly discussed adopting children from Ukraine with their older children and ordered them to keep it secret.
As the BBC wrote, together with Margarita Varlamova, she took a two-year-old boy, Ilya Vashchenko, from occupied Kherson. From the TSN investigation it became known that the politician and his wife decided not to take the child into the family after Varlamova went to the doctor with him and found out that the diagnoses were disappointing.
Mironov’s wife allegedly explained that she chose the girl herself, and the boy was brought to her. It is unknown where Ilya is now.
According to TSN journalists, in Ukraine Margarita Prokopenko, who is now called Marina Mironova according to Russian documents, has a legal guardian and an older sister (they have now left for Greece for safety reasons).
The publication “Important Stories” states that the girl has an older brother, Maxim Prokopenko. He was a pet of the Kherson orphanage and was illegally taken to Russia in October 2022.
Earlier, Mironov called the investigation by “Important Stories” and the BBC “a fake from the Ukrainian special services and their Western curators.”
The actions of the 70-year-old deputy and his 55-year-old wife may be classified as a war crime by the International Criminal Court.
The Geneva Convention expressly prohibits the forced movement of civilians within the territory of an occupied state. The Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide includes a definition of genocide as “the forcible transfer of children from one human group to another.”
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.