Russia: official accused of adopting girl kidnapped in Ukraine

A shameful accusation for the Kremlin. Sergei Mironov, the leader of a pro-Putin Russian party, denied on Thursday that he had adopted a Ukrainian girl kidnapped and taken to Russia following press reports. The BBC and Russian investigative media Important Stories claimed earlier this Thursday that Sergei Mironov, a supporter of the attack on Ukraine and a figure in the Putin regime for more than 20 years, had adopted a surrendered two-year-old Ukrainian girl with his wife. in Russia.

The girl, named Margarita, was part of a group of 48 children sent to Russia from a home in Kherson in southern Ukraine after the city was captured at the start of the Russian offensive, February 2022, according to the BBC.

Let us remind you that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova are accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of war crimes for the “illegal deportation” of thousands of Ukrainian children.

Ukraine estimates that 20,000 Ukrainian children were forcibly sent to Russia. So far, according to Kyiv, Ukrainian authorities have repatriated only about 400 people. The accusations are strongly denied by Moscow, which says it is protecting children from the fighting.

“Information attack”

70-year-old Sergei Mironov immediately called the press reports an “information attack” and “hysterical falsification unleashed by the Ukrainian special services and their Western manipulators.”

“Behind all this there is only one goal: to discredit those who today take an uncompromising patriotic position,” added this former chairman of the upper house of the Russian parliament in X (ex-Twitter) (2001-2011).

Sergei Mironov, who spoke with Vladimir Putin at St. Petersburg City Hall in the 1990s, also confirmed this Thursday that Russia will achieve a “complete victory” in Ukraine.