The Office of the Prosecutor General is conducting procedural supervision of the main proceedings concerning the deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories, the juvenile prosecutor said. In March 2024, based on evidence gathered regarding the deportation of two young children from the Kherson Regional Children’s Home to the territory of the aggressor country, juvenile prosecutors from the Office of the Prosecutor General, together with SBU investigators, issued a notice of suspicion in absentia to two Russian citizens close to the Russian president. One of the suspects is a deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, who is in fact a confidante of Sergey Mironov, leader of the Fair Russia party, and the other is his wife.
The Prosecutor General’s Office does not disclose their names, but they are likely to be Yana Lantratova and Inna Varlamova.
A girl and a boy were allegedly deported for medical examination
“The investigation found that at the end of August 2022, the above-mentioned persons arrived in the temporarily occupied Kherson, allegedly on an ‘official visit’, to identify specific children for further deportation. To this end, they visited a children’s facility that had been illegally established by the occupation administration on the basis of the Kherson Regional Children’s Home. Subsequently, they organised the deportation of two children – an 11-month-old girl and a boy of almost two years of age – under the pretext of additional medical examination. However, only the girl was an orphan, and the boy was temporarily staying at the facility due to difficult family circumstances,” said Yanina Tertychna.
As the investigation revealed, the children did not need any additional examinations or treatment due to their health condition. In addition, the prosecutor noted that there were hospitals and doctors working in the occupied territory of Kherson who could have provided qualified treatment to these two children in the event of illness or deterioration of their health. Therefore, there were no grounds for taking them out of the country.
Personal data changed: the girl was left with only her date of birth
The investigation says that the children were taken to the Moscow Region, where they were issued Russian-style birth certificates, and one of the defendants, Inna Varlamova, wife of Sergey Mironov, leader of the Fair Russia party, together with her husband, the head of this political party, adopted the girl and changed her personal data.
“In fact, only the child’s correct date of birth remained, while everything else – the child’s first name, surname and patronymic – was changed. The boy was handed over to the Moscow Region child welfare authorities due to psychological developmental disorders. His whereabouts are currently unknown. In other words, they took the child, and as soon as it became clear that the boy had certain disorders, they simply handed him over to the child welfare authorities,” said Tertychna.
In February 2025, the Office of the Prosecutor General sent an indictment to the court under Part 2 of Article 28 and Part 1 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (a war crime committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy). This article provides for imprisonment for a term of eight to twelve years.
As mentioned above, this case is currently in the preparatory stage in court. According to Yanina Tertychna, the procedure for summoning two accused citizens of the Russian Federation is currently underway.
“The summonses were published on the website of the Office of the Prosecutor General and in the Government Courier, as required by the Criminal Procedure Code. However, investigators obtained the suspects’ email addresses and phone numbers and sent them information via the relevant messaging apps. As of October 2025, no response had been received from them. If they do not appear at the court hearings in accordance with the procedure, the prosecutor’s office will request that the case be heard in absentia,” she commented.
The next hearing in the case of the accused Russian women, Varlamova and Lantratova, is scheduled for 2 December at the Shevchenkivskyi District Court in Kyiv.
Probable organisers and perpetrators of the crime
The investigation says that the two aforementioned Russian women had accomplices who were involved in the deportation of these children to the Russian Federation, as well as in the forced transfer of another 46 children to occupied Crimea. These are citizens of Ukraine: the so-called head of the "health department of the occupied Kherson region" and the acting chief physician of the "Kherson Regional Children's Home." They had previously been notified in absentia of their suspicion of committing this crime. Their actions were also classified under Part 2 of Article 28 and Part 1 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Therefore, they will be tried for war crimes.
"In addition, they are charged with the illegal transfer of 46 children from the Kherson Regional Children's Home to the temporarily occupied Crimea, which they committed together with a sanctioned deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the so-called "Minister of Health of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea" and his deputy. All of them are charged not only with the deportation or illegal transfer itself, but also with committing a criminal offence by prior conspiracy of a group of persons," added the juvenile prosecutor.
The investigation into this case has also been completed and was referred to court in the summer of 2025.
Complexity of investigations
In total, at the national level, the Office of the Prosecutor General has notified 16 individuals, including the above-mentioned figures, of their status as suspects in the deportation or illegal transfer of children. It should be added that this list includes individuals suspected of other episodes of deportation or illegal transfer. In other words, they relate not only to the Kherson Regional Children's Home, but also to possible crimes in the Donetsk and Mykolaiv regions and other children's institutions in the Kherson region. The Juvenile Prosecutor's Office emphasised that this includes both Russian and Ukrainian citizens. Currently, indictments have been sent to court for 10 individuals, and the trial is ongoing, with no verdicts yet in these cases.
"First of all, the complexity of investigating these cases lies in the lack of access to the temporarily occupied territories. Despite this, we have managed to gather a lot of information from open sources. It is now becoming particularly important as a tool for identifying, recording and documenting facts that have the characteristics of international war crimes," says Yanina Tertychna.
According to her, a lot of work is being done to identify possible witnesses and eyewitnesses to these crimes.
"When it comes to the Kherson Regional Children's Home, it housed not only orphans and children deprived of parental care, but also children who found themselves in difficult life circumstances. This means that they have parents who have not been deprived of their parental rights. The children were staying at the facility temporarily. We are working to identify the parents of these children. We are finding out whether they gave their consent to the removal of their children and whether the occupation administration is in contact with them regarding their children," said Yanina Tertychna.
The investigating authorities are also conducting various types of examinations. According to the head of the Department for the Protection of Children's Interests and Countering Domestic Violence of the Office of the Prosecutor General, due to the fact that children grow up and change, in all cases where possible, molecular genetic examinations are carried out — as part of the pre-trial investigation, DNA is collected from relatives in Ukraine. This is done so that in the future, when the children are returned to Ukraine, it can be established that it is the same child and families can be reunited.
In addition, the latest technologies are used to predict how a child's facial features will change over time, so that this data can be used in the search for children abducted by Russia.
"For example, take this girl, who was 11 months old. The crime was committed in 2022. The child is now almost four years old. Since then, she has grown up considerably and her facial features have changed. Therefore, in order to continue the search for these children, it is necessary to resort to all possible expertise and technologies," she said.
Of the group of 46 children, seven were returned home
Thus, the efforts made have already yielded results. Ukraine managed to return seven children from a group of 46 children from the Kherson Regional Children's Home who had been deported and illegally transferred from Kherson. Their return home took place in several stages.
“We managed to return a son to his mother. Her child ended up in a medical facility due to difficult family circumstances. The woman did not know and had no information that her son had been taken to Crimea. According to her, the occupying authorities did not take any measures to reunite the family," said Yanina Tertychna.
19,500 Ukrainian children deported: the figure may be different
The Security Service of Ukraine is verifying information from the National Information Bureau regarding the transfer and deportation of approximately 19,500 Ukrainian children from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions, i.e. from territories that were or remain temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation.
"This figure may be completely different, as Ukrainian children began to be 'evacuated to safer regions' from the so-called 'LPR' and 'DPR' a week before the start of the full-scale invasion. Law enforcement agencies are establishing all possible circumstances of these war crimes committed by the Russian Federation. We hope that all our children will return home," the prosecutor concluded.
We remind you that the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova specifically for the illegal deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children in March 2023.
This material was prepared as part of the INSTITUTE FOR WAR & PEACE REPORTING (IWPR) project ‘Justice Live’.