Who is Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova?
A WARRANT for the arrest of Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova over the alleged abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children.
The Russian has been accused alongside Vladimir Putin of war crimes by the International Criminal Court in a historic move.
Who is Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova?
Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova is Russia’s Children’s Right Commissioner.
Last year, a Sun investigation revealed Putin crony Lvova Belova also headed an organisation tasked with putting kidnapped Ukrainian children into Russian homes.
‘Into the Hands of Children’ is described as a humanitarian mission to help families in Ukraine with aid.
She claims to be the “saviour” of children caught up in the war but her compassionate rhetoric conceals a sinister plan to deport children from territories occupied by the invaders.
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The 38-year-old relentlessly flaunts her “good deeds” on her Telegram channel and on Russian state television
Under the 1948 Geneva Convention, forcibly transferring children and changing that child's nationality or civil status is considered a war crime.
But just one month after Putin’s invasion, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reported that 2,389 children had been illegally removed from the occupied Ukraine.
Ukraine's human rights chief, Dmytro Lubinets, has said 16,226 children were deported and the country has managed to bring back just 308 of them.
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Many children have been left orphaned or separated from their loved ones by Putin's ruthless invasion.
That’s left Belova's team of sick abductors free to sweep up innocent youngsters.
The UK Government described her involvement in the deportation of Ukrainian children as “barbaric”.
She is said to have ordered 2,000 children to be “violently” taken from the occupied Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
Lvova-Belova also proposed of Ukrainian youngsters and grant them Russian citizenship.
She has five biological children with her husband, a computer scientist turned priest.
Lvova-Belova is also the legal guardian of 13 disabled children placed within charitable organisations she herself founded, some of which have been accused of misuse of funds in the Russian press.
What's Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova's relationship with Vladimir Putin?
Lvova-Belova is a staunch ally of the Russian leader
She is a member of the governing body of the pro-Putin United Russia party, the largest party in the country’s parliament.
She has regularly been pictured with the tyrant and during a recent meeting told him she had recently adopted a 15-year-old child from the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol.
How has Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova responded to the ICC arrest warrant?
According to the ICC arrest warrant says there’s evidence she “bears individual criminal responsibility” for the abductions.
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She has reacted with dripping sarcasm to the indictment.
"It is great that the international community has appreciated the work to help the children of our country, that we do not leave them in war zones, that we take them out, we create good conditions for them, that we surround them with loving, caring people,” she said.