Daria Zarivna, Director of the Bring Kids Back UA initiative and Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President, spoke to NV about what happens to Ukrainian children in Russia and how some of them manage to return home.
— Are there any good news at the moment?
— Today, we are announcing the return of seven more children [the interview took place on February 6]. Since the beginning of the year, we have brought back 31 children. Last year, we managed to return about 450 children.
— In December, during your speech at the UN Headquarters, you demonstrated documents showing how Russian authorities falsify birth certificates of Ukrainian children, change their names, and place them for adoption into Russian families. What impact did these revelations have? Have they led to any countermeasures?
— This specific case concerns the Kherson Regional Children's Home. During the temporary occupation, the director was removed and replaced with a collaborator. In August 2022, Russian State Duma deputy Yana Lantratova (sanctioned by the EU, UK, and US) and Inna Varlamova, a State Duma staff member and wife of Fair Russia party leader Sergey Mironov, arrived at the facility to select children for deportation—like war trophies.
— Is this the same Mironov and Varlamova family that kidnapped and adopted 10-month-old Margarita Prokopenko from the Kherson orphanage?
— Yes. She was only 10 months old at the time. Now she is three years old. The Russians falsely diagnosed her with "acute bronchitis" and claimed she needed hospitalization in Moscow. Then, the Moscow Regional Department of Social Development declared her an orphan. Shortly after, she was adopted by Sergey Mironov and his wife. During the UN Security Council session, I presented Margarita’s Ukrainian birth certificate, where she is listed as Margarita Prokopenko. Then, I showed the Russian-issued certificate with her name changed and her birthplace recorded as Podolsk, Moscow region. The reaction was shock. When you move beyond abstract numbers and present concrete facts and documents, the impact is entirely different.
Margarita had an older brother, Maksym, who was also at the Kherson Children's Home. He was around two years old at the time, and he had an older sister who was abroad. Maksym was taken with other children to the Yalinka orphanage in occupied Crimea. Now, we have no information on him. We don’t know where he is or what has happened to him.
This will be a key issue in future negotiations. We insist that the matter of Ukrainian children must be taken off the table as a bargaining chip. This is crucial. Just like civilian hostages, Russia must return these children unconditionally.
Author: Oleksandr Paskhover