Ukraine: “They Just Took the Child”

Two Russian women are facing trial in absentia for deporting two young children from Kherson to Moscow, where one was forcibly adopted and the other taken into care.

The Prosecutor General’s Office has not officially released the names of the accused but they are believed to be Yana Lantratova, a member of the Russian State Duma, and Inna Varlamova, who is married to the head of A Just Russia party.

Juvenile prosecutors from the Prosecutor General’s Office, along with investigators from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), charged the women in March 2024 and the case is now in its preliminary stages at the Shevchenkivskyi District Court in Kyiv. 

“The investigation found that in late August 2022, the individuals in question arrived in temporarily occupied Kherson, allegedly on an official visit, to identify specific children for subsequent relocation,” said Yanina Tertychna, head of department at the Prosecutor General’s Office for the protection of children’s interests and countering domestic violence. 

“To do this, they visited a children’s facility that had been illegally established by the occupation administration on the site of the Kherson Regional Children’s Home. 

“They later organised the deportation of two children – an 11-month-old girl and a boy nearly two years old – under the pretext of an additional medical examination. Notably, only the girl was an orphan; the boy was temporarily at the facility due to difficult family circumstances.” 

According to the investigation, the children were in good health and required no medical examinations or treatment. The prosecutor pointed out that functioning hospitals and qualified doctors were available in occupied Kherson, ready to provide professional care if needed. Consequently, there was no justification for removing them from the country.

According to investigators, the children were taken to the Moscow region, where they were issued Russian-style birth certificates. Varlamova and her husband allegedly adopted the girl and changed her personal data.

“Essentially, the only correct information left was the child’s date of birth; everything else – her first name, last name and patronymic – was changed,” Tertychna said. “The boy was handed over to child protective services in the Moscow region due to psychological developmental issues. His current whereabouts are unknown. In other words, they took the child and as soon as they found out he had certain disabilities, they just gave him away to the authorities.”

The individuals have been charged under Article 438, Part 1 and Article 28, Part 2 of the criminal code of Ukraine. These charges carry a potential prison sentence of eight to 12 years.

In accordance with the criminal procedure code, court summonses for the accused were published on the Prosecutor General’s Office website and in the official Uriadovyi Kurier newspaper. Investigators also obtained the suspects’ email addresses and phone numbers and sent them notifications via messaging apps. As of October 2025, no response had been received. If the accused fail to appear for the court hearings, the prosecution will file a motion for a trial in absentia.

The next hearing is scheduled for December 2 at the Shevchenkivskyi District Court in Kyiv.

Illegal Transfer

According to investigators, the Russian women had accomplices involved in the deportation of children to the Russian Federation and the forced transfer of 46 other children to occupied Crimea. These accomplices are Ukrainian citizens: the de facto head of the Health Department of the occupied Kherson region and the acting chief doctor of the Kherson Regional Children’s Home, neither of whom have been named. Both have been charged in absentia and will prosecuted under Part 2 of Article 28 and Part 1 of Article 438 of the criminal code of Ukraine. 

“They face additional charges for the illegal transfer of 46 children from the Kherson Regional Children’s Home to temporarily occupied Crimea, which they committed alongside a sanctioned member of the Russian State Duma, the so-called Minister of Health of Crimea and his deputy,” Tertychna said. “All are charged not only with the act of deportation or illegal transfer itself, but with committing the crime as part of a pre-arranged conspiracy.”

This case was split from the one involving Lantratova and Varlamova and was sent to court in the summer of 2025 after the investigation concluded.

Nationwide, the Prosecutor General’s Office has named 16 people as suspects in the deportation and illegal transfer of children, including the individuals mentioned above. Tertychna emphasised that the suspects include both Russian and Ukrainian citizens. To date, indictments against ten of these individuals have been sent to court, and their trials are now underway. No verdicts have yet been reached in these cases.

“The primary difficulty in investigating these cases is the lack of access to the temporarily occupied territories. Despite this, we have managed to gather a significant amount of information from open sources,” said Tertychna. She added that a major effort was underway to identify potential witnesses to these crimes.

“Regarding the Kherson Regional Children’s Home, it housed children from families facing difficult circumstances. This means they have parents who were never stripped of their custodial rights; the children were only in the facility temporarily,” Tertychna continued. “We are making it a priority to identify these parents to determine whether they consented to their children’s relocation and if the occupation administration is maintaining contact with them.”

Investigative authorities are also conducting various forensic examinations. Tertychna said that DNA testing was carried out whenever possible because children grow and their appearances change. 

“This is to ensure that when the children are returned to Ukraine, we can definitively establish their identity and reunite them with their families. Additionally, advanced technology is used to predict how child’s facial features will change over time, providing crucial data for the search for children abducted by Russia. Take the case of a girl who was just 11 months old when she was taken in 2022. She is now nearly four and in that time her appearance has changed considerably. That’s why continuing the search for these children requires us to use every available technology and forensic method,” she said.

Recent efforts have yielded results, with Ukraine securing the return of seven children from a group of 46 illegally deported from the Kherson home. Their return was carried out in several stages.

“We managed to reunite a son with his mother, who was actively cooperating with law enforcement,” said Tertychna. “Her child had been placed in a medical facility due to difficult family circumstances. The woman had no information that her son had been taken to Crimea. According to her, the occupying authorities took no steps to reunite the family.”

According to law enforcement officials, approximately 19,500 Ukrainian children remain in the occupied territories and within the Russian Federation.