The Ministry of Foreign Affairs asks to investigate the adoption of a child kidnapped in Mariupol by the Russian Ombudsman

Criminal proceedings will be initiated against the Commissioner of the Russian Federation for Childrenʼs Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the adoption of a child kidnapped by the Russians from Mariupol.

This is stated in the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"At the behest of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine initiates the opening of a case against the Russian citizen Lvova-Belova, whose actions show signs of a criminal offense before the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine," the statement reads.

They also drew attention to the fact that the Russian commissioner admitted that she facilitated the illegal adoption of almost 350 more children from the captured regions of Donbas in the Russian Federation.

"The removal of Ukrainian children from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia and their subsequent adoption by Russian citizens grossly violates the legislation of Ukraine, as well as the Geneva Convention on the Protection of the Civilian Population in Time of War from 1949, which stipulates the obligation of the occupying state not to change the civil status of children, and the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted.

The Ministry called on the international community to strongly condemn the ongoing crimes of Russia and its officials against children in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories.

• In mid-October, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin stated that the Russian authorities had taken several thousand children out of the annexed Kherson region.
• According to the Office of the Ombudsman, at least 7 700 Ukrainian children were deported to Russia. Deported adults are forced to undergo "filtering".