Baby Missing in Ukraine, Russian Opposition Leader Accused of Kidnapping and Adoption

Last Year, Margarita, a Girl Kidnapped in Ukraine,
Adopted by Mironov, Leader of the Justice Russia Party

A baby who went missing in southern Ukraine was revealed to have been kidnapped to Russia and adopted by a politician couple, drawing public attention.

Igor Kastukevich, a member of the Russian State Duma (left), is seen last October putting children into a car at a children's shelter in Kherson, Ukraine.
[Photo by X (formerly Twitter), captured from Kastukevich's Telegram]

According to reports from major foreign media on the 24th (local time), a girl named 'Margarita' who lived in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine was adopted by the couple of Sergey Mironov, a member of the Russian pro-government opposition party 'A Just Russia' and its leader.

Kherson was a region occupied by Russia last year. Since then, 48 children were kidnapped or went missing from local orphanages, and Margarita was the youngest among them.

The Kherson orphanage where Margarita stayed was a place for children without parents or those who had lost custody. Margarita's mother gave up custody immediately after birth, and her father's whereabouts were unknown.

At the time, 10-month-old Margarita was hospitalized and receiving treatment for bronchitis when she had a brief meeting with a stranger who came to see her. The woman introduced herself as the 'person in charge of child affairs from Moscow.'

Later in October of the same year, Igor Kastyukevich, a member of the Russian State Duma, along with other officials, visited the orphanage and took Margarita and other children away by car.

Lyubov Saiko, a nurse at the orphanage who witnessed the event, explained, "Kastyukevich and the officials appeared in military uniforms and sunglasses, took the children away. They looked like people from a movie. It was very frightening."

Afterwards, Kastyukevich posted a video on his Telegram showing children being loaded onto buses and ambulances from the orphanage. He added, "The children will be moved to a safe place in the Crimean Peninsula."

Margarita Adopted by A Just Russia Party Leader Mironov

Sergey Mironov, a candidate in the 2012 Russian presidential election, voting on election day. Major foreign media recently exposed that he illegally kidnapped and adopted Ukrainian children with his newlywed wife.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

Foreign media later tracked the current whereabouts of the 48 children from the orphanage and discovered that the woman who visited Margarita when she was hospitalized was 'Inna Balamova,' a former member of the Russian parliament.

Balamova took a train from Moscow to Kherson on the day Margarita left the orphanage and boarded a train back to Moscow with Margarita that same night.

Subsequently, Balamova married Mironov, the leader of A Just Russia and the parliamentary floor leader. The birth record of a girl named 'Marina,' whose parents are this couple, shows the same birthdate as Margarita: October 31, 2021.

Foreign media also obtained additional adoption records confirming that 'Margarita Prokopenko' took her adoptive father Mironov's surname and became 'Marina Mironova.'

Mironov has not provided any significant response to inquiries regarding these reports.

Meanwhile, Ukraine announced that since the outbreak of war following Russia's invasion in February last year, 19,546 Ukrainian children have been confirmed to have been taken to Russia. Of these, fewer than 400 children have returned.

In March, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of involvement in war crimes related to the abduction of children from occupied Ukrainian territories and forcibly relocating them to mainland Russia.

Russia, however, does not recognize the validity of this measure, citing that it is not an ICC member state, and has explained that it was merely evacuating children from the war zone in Ukraine.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.