Putin appoints child abduction suspect as human rights chief
Yana Lantratova was allegedly part of an operation in 2022 to transfer two Ukrainian children from a children’s home in Kherson for adoption in Moscow
Russia has appointed as its new human rights ombudsman a woman accused of helping to abduct a Ukrainian infant to be adopted by an ally of President Putin.
Yana Lantratova, 37, was allegedly part of the operation, carried out in 2022, to illegally transfer two Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied Kherson in eastern Ukraine to Moscow.
The international criminal court in the Hague indicted Putin and his children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, in 2023 for the mass abduction of Ukrainian children.
Lantratova, an MP in the Duma from the Kremlin-controlled A Just Russia party, is among those said to have been involved in removing minors from Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine to Russia.
The SBU, the security service of Ukraine, alleges that during the occupation of Kherson in 2022, Lantratova and Inna Varlamova, the wife of Sergei Mironov, the leader of A Just Russia, forcibly took a ten-month-old girl and a two-year-old boy from a children’s home to Russia.
The girl, Margarita Prokopenko, was being treated for bronchitis in hospital. A doctor caring for her later said she was surprised by the decision to move the infant to Moscow.
Mironov, 73, and Varlamova, 58, adopted Prokopenko and changed her name to Marina Mironova, according to documents seen by journalists. Her place of birth was registered on a Russian birth certificate as Podolsk, a city near Moscow.
Margarita Prokopenko was said to have been adopted by Mironov and his wife, who renamed her Marina Mironova
Ukraine said that almost 20,000 children had been illegally sent to Russia and Belarus.
A UN commission said in March that it had so far identified 1,205 cases of children who were taken from Ukrainian territories by Moscow in 2022. Up to 80 per cent have not been returned and many parents and guardians do not know where their children are, which represents a crime against humanity.
Most of the minors lived in the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine. They were sent to institutions or families and given Russian citizenship. Putin said the children were being “rescued” from a war zone.
Lantratova, a former journalism student who briefly worked for MTV Russia, rose to prominence via the Young Guard of the pro-Putin United Russia party.
As an activist, she gained notoriety in 2011 when children from an orphanage claimed she had suggested they act as “bait” to catch paedophiles. One boy told Radio Svoboda how, with Lantratova’s knowledge, he met a paedophile in his car and secretly recorded him talking about rapes he had committed. Lantratova denied any involvement. She has not commented on the abduction claims.
Her career suggests a conservative take on human rights. In 2022 she spearheaded legislative changes to extend a 2013 ban on “LGBT propaganda” among minors to all age groups. Putin signed the amendments into law in December that year.
In 2024 Lantratova was behind legislation to prohibit any promotion of the idea of being “child-free”, saying it was a “radical movement” that encouraged egoism and eroded the country’s demographics.
She has also argued against the “furries” movement of children imitating animals and said characters in western films such as Shrek, The Grinch and Monsters, Inc. were harmful to youngsters because “they have both physical and personality flaws”.
Her predecessor as ombudsman was Tatyana Moskalkova, 70, a former police major general who served two five-year terms and took part in arranging prisoner swaps between Moscow and Kyiv.
Appointed by parliament, the human rights ombudsman is responsible for handling complaints of abuses and investigating them, although critics say the office is ideologically in line with Kremlin prejudices.
Ukrainian children play at an abandoned checkpoint in liberated Kherson in 2022—BERNAT ARMANGUE/AP
Mironov is a long-term, loyal supporter of Putin, who once ran “against” the former KGB officer for the presidency, saying: “When a leader who is trusted goes into battle, he must not be left alone.” In 2023 he said in response to a news report about the alleged abduction of Prokopenko that it was “a fake from the Ukrainian secret services and their western handlers”.
The fate of Ilya Vashchenko, the two-year-old boy taken to Moscow, is unclear. A report in 2024 suggested the Mironovs had also adopted a young boy from Kherson, but his identity is not known.
Prokopenko has an official guardian in Ukraine who wants the girl returned, it has been reported.
Another 46 children from the same children’s home were apparently taken to Russian-occupied Crimea. Kherson was liberated by Ukrainian troops in November 2022.