Russian children’s rights chief says teenager abducted from Mariupol and “adopted” by her will become prosecutor
Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova has said that a Ukrainian teenager named Pylip, whom she”adopted”after he was abducted from occupied Mariupol, has enrolled in a Russian university.
Source: Lvova-Belova on social media; Bring Kids BackUA
Details:The Russian official posted a video featuring the young man, writing that he will study to become a prosecutor at the Moscow State Law University.
The Bring Kids Back UA initiative stressed that behind his university enrolment was the removal of a child from occupied territory, the issuance of a Russian ID, his unlawful placement under guardianship and systematic efforts to erase his identity.
“Russia is attempting to frame the repercussions of Russification and indoctrination as ‘rescue’ and ‘a new life’,” the initiative said.
Background:
- In August 2022, Lvova-Belova announced she had become the foster mother of a teenager taken from Ukraine. He and about 30 other Mariupol children had been transported to a sanatorium in Moscow Oblast.
- In 2023, she said that when Pylyp first joined her family, he would chase her younger children shouting, “I’ll eat you, little Moskal”.
- The ombudsman claimed that the boy had celebrated his birthday in her family for the first time in several years. “But now we love each other. My son has started calling me mum,” she said.
- The ombudsman – against whom the International Criminal Courtissued an arrest warrant – subsequently said that Pylip had “complicated the family dynamic” because of post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from the attacks he had experienced.
- She complained that the boy hated Russia and sang Ukrainian songs, but said he had since begun to distance himself from “Ukrainian propaganda”.
- The Schemes project established that Pylip had lost his mother in 2017 and had since been living with her former husband and his new wife.
