Russia has appointed a politician accused of kidnapping Ukrainian children to be its point person for dealing with human rights abuses.
The State Duma, the lower house of Parliament, on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to endorse Yana Lantratova, a 37-year-old lawmaker, as ombudswoman for human rights, a position that reports directly to President Vladimir V. Putin. The Ukrainian authorities have said that Ms. Lantratova was instrumental in helping the chairman of her political party, A Just Russia, to illegally adopt a girl from Russia-occupied Ukraine.
Ukraine has accused Moscow of deporting thousands of children to Russia or forcibly displacing them in the Ukrainian territories it occupies. A United Nations commission said in March that it had identified some 1,200 cases of children who were taken from Ukrainian territory by the Russian authorities in 2022.
Russia has insisted it has mostly removed children from orphanages away from the front line for their own safety.
Ms. Lantratova, who rose through the ranks in recent years from the youth wing of the ruling party, worked with the wife of A Just Russia’s leader, Sergei Mironov, to illegally transfer two children from the southeastern Ukrainian city of Kherson when it was under Russian occupation, according to an indictment by Ukraine’s security agency, the S.B.U.
One of the children, a 10-month-old girl, was adopted by the Mironovs. Ukraine’s ombudsman for children’s rights said that the girl already had an official guardian in Ukraine.
The Mironovs changed the child’s last name and created a new birth certificate that listed a Moscow suburb as her place of birth, according to reports in independent Russian and Ukrainian media.
Russian state media reported that Ms. Lantratova and Mr. Mironov’s wife, Inna Varlamova, “helped to evacuate” Kherson’s orphanage ahead of a Ukrainian counterattack.
Mr. Mironov has dismissed Ukraine’s claims as a smear campaign against him. Ms. Lantratova has not responded to the allegations.
The International Criminal Court has accused Mr. Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, of war crimes for the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children. The I.C.C. in 2023 issued an arrest warrant for both.
In Russia, the office of the human rights ombudsman, which was introduced in 1993, is tasked with pushing authorities to investigate complaints of rights abuse. Ms. Lantratova’s predecessor, whose two five-year terms just expired, took an active role in prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine, serving as the only Russian official in regular contact with the Ukrainian authorities during the war.
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