Russian woman takes Ukrainian child from occupied territory, plans adoption

Olga Dorokhina, a Russian woman whose son was killed in Russia’s war against Ukraine, took a 4-year-old girl from the Ukrainian occupied part of Kherson Oblast and plans to adopt her, Ukrainian state media outlet reported on 10 March.

According to the Ukrainian authorities, Russia has deported at least 20,000 Ukrainian children, and started doing so en masse 6 days before the start of the full-scale war. About 314 Ukrainian children have been transferred to Russian families. Ukraine managed to return 1,240 abducted children.

The Russian woman said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that she has found a “daughter” during her first trip to the Kherson Oblast. The Ukrainian girl is now “under the care” of Dorokhina’s family.

Olga Dorokhina is a member of the organisation ‘Hero’s Wife and Mother. Crimea”. The Russian woman is originally from the city of Yelets in the Lipetsk Oblast, but in 2016 her family moved to Ukraine’s occupied Simferopol.

Her husband, Alexander Dorokhin, is a former employee of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service and a veteran of the Russian-Chechen war.

Their eldest son, Vladyslav Dorokhin, was a sailor in the Black Sea Fleet and died in June 2022 in the Donetsk Oblast during hostilities against Ukraine. After the death of her son, Olga Dorokhina began to engage in “humanitarian missions” in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

During one of these trips, she took a 4-year-old girl from the Kherson Oblast, according to Suspilne investigation.

Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer with the Regional Human Rights Centre of Ukraine, said that the girl may have previously lived in the Kherson orphanage, from where the Russians took the orphans to an unknown destination in 2022.

According to the lawyer, such actions by Dorokhina can be considered a violation of international law, in particular, a crime with signs of genocide.

In 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and Russian Ombudsperson for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova.

They are accused of illegally deporting and transferring Ukrainian children from the occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia, which is a war crime. Belova herself also “adopted” a Ukrainian teenager deported from Mariupol.

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