Sergei Mironov, 70, a Duma deputy, denies his accusations. 20,000 children have reportedly been deported to Russia since the start of the conflict in Ukraine.
Sergei Mironov, leader of a pro-Kremlin party, denied Thursday having adopted a two-year-old Ukrainian girl transferred to Russia, after press reports to this effect, accusing Kiev and the West of being behind this “informational attack “.
Earlier Thursday, the BBC and the Russian investigative media Important Stories assured that Sergei Mironov, supporter of the assault in Ukraine and figure of the Putin regime for more than 20 years, had adopted, with his wife, a little Ukrainian girl two years transferred to Russia.
According to the BBC, the little girl, named Margarita, was part of a group of 48 children sent to Russia from a home in Kherson, in southern Ukraine, after that city was conquered at the start of the Russian offensive. from February 2022.
Sergei Mironov, 70, a Duma deputy, quickly called the press reports an “informational attack” and a “hysterical falsification unleashed by the Ukrainian special services and their Western manipulators.”
“There is only one goal behind all this: to discredit those who today adopt an uncompromising patriotic position,” added this former president of the upper house of the Russian Parliament on X (ex-Twitter) (2001). -2011).
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office said that the “illegal deportation” of these 48 children from Kherson was under investigation.
So far, only one child from this group has been returned to Ukraine, he added in a statement.
A Russian deputy, who has not been named, as well as an official from the Kherson region and a doctor from the home are suspected of having played a role in this affair, the prosecutor’s office said.
Mr. Mironov, who rubbed shoulders with Vladimir Putin at the town hall of Saint Petersburg in the 1990s, also affirmed Thursday that Russia would obtain “a complete victory” in Ukraine.
The Russian President and the 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.
These accusations are firmly rejected by Moscow, which claims to protect children from fighting.
Ukraine estimates that 20,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly sent to Russia. At this stage, according to kyiv, only around 400 have been repatriated by Ukrainian authorities.
