Part 3: If you want to conquer a people, raise their children
(Research March/April 2023)-(Written June/July 2023)
Investigators/Authors: Desirée Vázquez Aranda , Lou Crignon, Martina Danesi, Nicoleta Banila and Deniz M. Dirisu
Edited by: Gijs Freriks
The Perpetrators
The Mastermind
Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova is the one tasked by President Putin with the forced transfer of children from the occupied areas to Russia and facilitating their placement and adoption in foster care families, as well as ensuring that they are issued new birth certificates and given Russian citizenship. First articles about the deportation of children to Russia and Belova‘s role in the scheme were published starting in June, after the UK and other states, as well as the EU Council, added Belova to their list of sanctions.
She dismissed the articles as fake news (link1, link2). “The placement of orphans in Russian families is done in the interests of children and in strict accordance with the law,” she claims. As for the sanctions, she states: “Getting on the sanctions lists is like a hero's star. I already have five of these … In general, this [inclusion on the list] is an indicator that now children cannot be hidden behind like human shields because children are now safe.”
However, Belova is not the sole perpetrator in this scheme of forcible transfer of children. While asking for more funding for her programs, Belova mentioned that her team has tripled to 100 members who are helping with the deportation and placement of children. Belova's activities in the Miro board link reveal circumstances in which over 380 children were forcibly transferred for adoption and guardianship in Russia from Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Mariupol.
The Aides
Aleksey Petrov is mentioned in very few official documents as an advisor to the Office of the Commissioner for Children's’ Rights of the Russian Federation. Despite his very discreet public presence, he has been on the Council of the EU’s sanctions list since December.. “In this role, he is involved in the illegal transportation of Ukrainian children to Russia and their adoption by Russian families”, the Council states.
We managed to find only one press release on the website of Belova’s office mentioning his official capacity (and his phone number) and twice (1,2) as a “Children in the Hands” campaign coordinator. The phone number helped us find his photo and discover that as of 2018 and 2019, he was an employee of the PR firm Polylog and the Eurasian Orthopaedic Forum 2019 organiser.
Unlike Belova, he has a restrained public and social media presence and does not appear listed in his official capacity in media materials or governmental websites. Using specific tools, we managed to find him in several photos accompanying Belova and children from Mariupol on a sightseeing tour in June, at a meeting with children from Mariupol, opening a joint camp session for teenagers from DPR and Russia, and inaugurating the humanitarian mission "Into the Hands of Children" in DPR.
Alexey Gazaryan, 37, is not included on any international sanctions list but is mentioned as Belova’s aid and chief of staff in two media articles (1,2). In the second article, he says he knew Belova for a long time, and when she was a senator in the Penza region, he helped her as an advisor. According to a description posted on the Moscow Socio Pedagogical Institute website, Gazaryev is a social educator, public and church figure, publicist, and member of several children’s organisations and was awarded the medal "For the Patriotic Education of Youth". He is a father of 4 children, one of whom is adopted.
In an August interview, he speaks of his active role in bringing children from the DPR and LPR into Russia. “There is a decision by the President to remove obstacles so that children from the DPR and LPR can be placed under guardianship in Russian families. With the active participation of Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Belova and our team, more than 150 children have been transferred to families during this time,” Gazaryan said, adding that there is a huge line, as “everyone wants little ones”. He also contradicts media criticism: “Ukrainian and foreign media write that we kidnapped or forcibly removed someone. This is not true. We check many times whether there are relatives and ask the children themselves. We check documents several times.”
In November, Gazaryan described in detail the process of family placement of Ukrainian children kept in social institutions for the International Red Cross Committee, which said it desires to intensify cooperation with Belova’s office. 380 children were transferred under guardianship to Russian foster families at the request of the authorised executive authorities of the republics, Gazaryan said.
Power influencers
Anna Kuznetsova
Even though Belova seems to have the President’s ear, she appears to rely on her predecessor Anna Kuznetsova to push legislation in order to be able to facilitate the placement and adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families or institutions.
Also born in Penza, Kuznetsova is the wife of an Orthodox priest and has seven children. In her capacity as Deputy Chair of the State Duma, she said in February 2022 that some families want to adopt children from Donbass, adding that proceedings are easier with children who have already received Russian citizenship. Two months later, she spoke in favour of synchronising laws of Russia, DPR, and LPR to help orphans of Donbass to find parents, adding that more than a thousand children from orphanages were evacuated to Russia. She also accused Ukraine of “stealing” 22 children from families from Donbass and asked the chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, for help to try to find the children and return them to their families. “In total, we are talking about 60 missing babies and teenagers, whom the Kyiv regime could send abroad, including for illegal adoption or transfer to third parties,” Kuznetsova said.
During her 5-year mandate as Children’s Ombudsman, Kuznetsova played a central part in returning Russian children from Syria and Iraq. Foreign Policy Institute notes in an article that Russia has been more focused on returning the children of ISIS members than it has been on returning female ISIS members and that authorities have avoided public discussion of policy towards the treatment of female ISIS members. However, Tanya Lokshina, the director of Human Rights Watch for Europe and Central Asia, recently praised Russia for doing more to repatriate the children of ISIS fighters than Western democracies. The Washington Post claims Russia’s efforts are part of its plan to be seen as a nation that actively cares about human rights.
Kuznetsova is under international sanctions from EU countries and other states such as the UK, the US, and Switzerland.
Governors
Several governors are mentioned in the latest version of the Council of Europe’s list recommending that 141 persons and 49 entities deemed responsible for actions undermining or threatening Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence be subjected to sanctions within the EU. Governor of Astrakhan Oblast Igor Babushkin, Murmansk Oblast governor Andrey Chibis, governor of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast Gleb Nikitin, Tver Oblast governor Igor Rudenya, Vladislav Shapsha, governor of Kaluga Oblast, Novosibirsk Oblast governor Andrey Travnikov, and Moscow Oblast governor Vorobyov are involved in the illegal transportation of Ukrainian children to Russia and their adoption by Russian families, violating the rights of Ukrainian children and infringing Ukrainian law and administrative order, the Council says.
The Council’s claims are supported by available content on governmental sites and official social media accounts with the governors receiving or visiting foster families who took in considerable numbers of children from Mariupol, Kherson, Donetsk, Lugansk, and others. In September, Chibis said he had received a group of 11 children from occupied Ukrainian territories, left without parietal care, who were sent to foster families in Kandalaksha, Kovdor, Polyarnye Zori, and Olenegorsk. In October, Vorobyov shared a video greeting children ‘rescued from the war zone’ arriving by plane to Russia, saying they were sent to family centers. “We have developed a clear algorithm for the placement of children rescued from the war zone. 80 children have already found their homes,” he said. He thanked federal authorities and Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Belova, adding that “they do their best to help transport children from the war zone, arrange them in families, quickly draw up documents and Russian citizenship”. In July, Vorobyov shared a video of himself visiting a foster family in Lyubertsy, which adopted nine children from Donetsk. Solovyov announced on January 6 that 1,620 children from LPR, DPR, Zaporozhye, and Kherson regions arrived by train to see the Kremlin Christmas tree in Moscow and spend the holidays there.
Other-Government officials
Aleksey Petrov, mentioned before, Anton Solovyov, a ‘United Russia’ party member elected in the legislative assembly of St. Petersburg, and party member Eleonora Fedorenko and Advisor on Children’s Rights to the head of the DPR are also involved in the illegal transportation of Ukrainian children to Russia and their adoption by Russian families.
Larisa Falkovskaya, the director of the Department of State Policy for the Protection of Children's' Rights of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, has facilitated the illegal transportation and adoption of over 2,000 Ukrainian orphans. In various official public appearances, Larisa Falkovskaya has acted as the main spokesperson and coordinator for Russia’s illegal deportation scheme, the Council notes.
The Party
Another key actor in the deportation scheme is the United Russia Party, which helped to place orphaned children from Luhansk and Donetsk with Russian foster families. Secretary of the General Council of the party Andrei Turchak created a taskforce precisely for this purpose, in collaboration with the governors of Donetsk and Luhansk, Pushilin and Pasechnik, under the supervision of Maria Lvova-Belova. Party officials also helped local governors draw up documents for refugees from Donbass and are actively involved in placing children in Russian schools, as well as in organising leisure and education camps and activities for them. According to a local party official, teaching Ukrainian children in the Russian language is a priority. The party also launched a campaign to send Ukrainian children to school.
Children are taught in Russian and are enrolled in educational institutions with the same rights as Russians, Kommersant reported in February 2022. Between February 18 and 22 March, kindergartens, schools, and colleges in 57 regions of Russia accepted over 13,000 children from Donbass and Luhansk.
The party’s logo can be seen in TACs all over the country (1,2), as the party coordinated the organisation of such centers and donation points all over the country, including through its volunteer corps and All-Russia People's Front (ONF), a body aiming to forge formal alliances between United Russia Party and local NGOs, as well as to provide the party with "new ideas, new suggestions, and new faces".
As of November, there were more than 40 United Russia humanitarian centers in the Donbass, Kherson, and Zaporozhye regions, 15 centers open in the DPR, of which 10 were in Mariupol. The party also set up centers for legal and psychological assistance, as well as children's leisure centers in a number of territories. As part of its achievements throughout 2022, the party lists being able to enforce legislation as needed to support its humanitarian mission.
This local media article shows United Russia party activists offering New Year gifts to children living in a TAC in Syktyvkar, in the Komi Republic. United Russia deputy of the State Council of the Komi Republic Valentina Zhideleva told 15-year-old Pasha: "Together with our fellow United Russia party members, together with those who organised this wonderful action, we will fulfill your wish, and in the new year, you will have everything, what you wanted to get. The most important thing is that it helps you study well, do what you love, and grow up as a citizen of great Russia!"
Essential enablers
Occupation leaders
Heads of the so-called DPR and LPR, Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, are crucial to the approval and organisation of the forcible deportation scheme, as we can gather from their activity.
Pushilin held a meeting in April with all relevant child protection authorities and other high-ranking officials, such as Kuznetsova, agreeing to speed up adoption procedures for children in the Republic. On October 7, 53 orphans from the DPR arrived in the Moscow Region on a Russian Aerospace Forces plane with Belova's assistance after Pushilin requested their evacuation to safe areas of the country, according to presidential website data. The website further indicated 234 orphans from the Donbass republics arrived in Russia in just a week. A few months later, in November, Belova told Pushilin in a meeting: “It was important for me to report on those children whom you entrusted to us. 288 children, 15 regions. Eleonora Mikhailovna [Fedorenko] and I personally delivered some of them. We saw that these were professional foster families, and the governors took everything under their personal control. In addition to additional financial and material support, teams of specialists are also working, psychologists and doctors, to help with integration into education.”
Pasechnik said in April, during a meeting with Kuznetsova, Belova, and others about placing orphans from Donbass in foster families in Russia: “The second step lies in the practical plane - to select families for children. It is about adoption and guardianship. I will sincerely be happy for the children who will end up in Russian families.” The meeting marked the beginning of discussions to create legislation so that orphans may be placed in Russian foster families, headed by Belova but spearheaded by Kuznetsova. “Today, we are working in Luhansk. At our request, the head of the LPR, Leonid Pasechnik, convened a working meeting on the topic of placing orphans and children left without parental care in Russian families. To contribute to the speedy resolution of this issue is the task set by the President,” Belova said.
In October, Energodar mayor Dmytro Orlov said that Russia abducted children from the city and took them to Krasnodar Krai, pretending it was for a vacation. On the Russian website of the occupied Zaporozhye region head Evgeny Balytskyi, there are several announcements (link1, link2) of children being sent for recreation to the country’s best health resorts in Krasnodar, Anapa, and Crimea. In Anapa alone, some 700 were hosted in August.
The Media
In February 2023, during a discussion with President Putin, Lvova-Belova insisted on mentioning and thanking Ukrainian oligarch and pro-Kremlin politician Viktor Medvechuk and his wife Oksana, a well-known TV presenter in Ukraine, for their help in her work. Medvechuk lives in exile in Russia after being handed over in a prisoner exchange in September 2022. In the same category of wealthy supporters, she mentions Konstantin Malofeev for aid provided through the Tsargrad media group and the St. Basil the Great Charity Fund. He is the chairman of both organisations but has several other businesses and NGOs. In a post on social media, he takes pride in helping Belova support children in Donbass and “New Russia”. He mentions support from “volunteers, donors, academicians, and residents of Constantinople, brothers from the Double Headed Eagle Foundation, and sisters from the Union of Orthodox Women”. Malofeev has appeared on sanctions lists in the US, EU, Canada, UK, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, Ukraine, and New Zealand for funding pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine, among others.
Politicians
Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova has a special group to ensure the rights of citizens from the DPR, LPR, Kherson, and Zaporozhye regions are respected. In April, she went to the Chechen Republic accommodation center, which hosted Ukrainian adults and children evacuated from Mariupol.
A Telegram post by Igor Yurievich Kastyukevic, who represents the United Russia party in Kherson, shows a video of more than 50 children being taken from a Kherson orphanage being taken presumably to Crimea. The official thanked Kuznetsova, Andrey Turchak, and Crimea governor Aksyonov for the evacuation. Volodymyr Saldo, the governor of the Kherson region before liberation, asked Russian leadership to help evacuate civilians and said that the region decided to organise the possibility for families to travel to other regions of the Russian Federation for recreation and study.
Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov met with Ukrainian children brought to Russia in Tula and stressed that the health camps are ready to receive them.
Nina Ostanina, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children, advocated that schoolchildren from the LPR and DPR, as well as from other liberated regions of Ukraine, have the opportunity to continue their studies in Russia. “The implementation of the educational process for these categories of children is possible on the basis of children's health camps and sanatoriums, which will be empty with the end of the summer period and have the opportunity to receive children in the winter season,” she said.
The Red Cross
Five days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian Red Cross (RKK) chairman Pavel Savchuk said that the organisation would “provide humanitarian assistance and do everything possible to alleviate the fate of people arriving from the DPR and LPR”. Together with various branches of ONF, the RKK is coordinating the collection and distribution of humanitarian aid, the meeting of refugees from Donbass, the organisation of living conditions, and psychological support. “There are a lot of children among the internally displaced persons. These are those whose parents asked about accommodation and those who stayed with friends and relatives. For example, in the Rostov region, the Russian Red Cross has already helped more than 3,000 children in temporary accommodation centers, with more than 500 children staying outside. In the Voronezh region, these figures are 700 and 250, respectively,” Savchuk said in March 2022.
The Church
The Russian Orthodox Church is actively involved in helping refugees from Donbass and Ukraine. This work is coordinated by the Synodal Department for Church Charity and Social Service, led by Bishop Panteleimon of Vereya. As of July 25, the Russian Orthodox Church has collected over 225.4 million rubles to help refugees and victims in the conflict zone. A significant part of this amount is collections in churches and monasteries, organised with the blessing of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus'. Refugees were placed in 59 church institutions in Russia, Germany, Great Britain, and Ukraine. In August 2022, Bishop Panteleimon of Vereya held an online meeting with representatives of the dioceses dedicated to helping refugees, with more than 230 people from 144 dioceses in Russia: heads of diocesan social departments, priests temporary visiting accommodation centers, social workers directly involved in helping refugees. The Bishop stressed the importance of helping refugees not only with food and clothing but also in finding work, housing, and placing children in a kindergarten or school. Natalya Yeremicheva, the head of the church headquarters for helping refugees in Moscow, spoke about a center opened by the Synodal Department where, among others, refugees are assisted in obtaining allowances and documents, assistance in placement and employment. The aid center received 19,040 requests from refugees since March.
