Putin’s ‘child-catcher’: the woman in charge of abducting Ukrainian kids ...Middle East

Like any proud mother, Maria Lvova-Belova is always posting photos of herself with her son. 

There are beaming selfies, cuddles in the sunshine, and pictures with the whole family.

“My boy, I love you very much!”, she writes next to the social media snaps. “The happiness in the eyes of this big child is what fills my life with new meaning.”

The love is publicly reciprocated by her adopted child Filipp, who calls Maria his “beloved mother”.

“She is the best person I could have met in my life. I love her very much. She is my true mother, she is like magic,” the 18-year-old has said. “It is unimaginable how much she has done for me.”

It’s a relationship many parents of teenagers would be envious of – but the truth behind this story of maternal love is much darker and troubling than it appears.

Lvova-Belova has become known as President Vladimir Putin’s “child snatcher”. Described as “evil” and a “fanatic” by researchers monitoring her actions, the glamorous politician has been tasked by the Russian President to oversee the forced deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children and the operation to brainwash them into becoming ideal Russian citizens.  

It was during a trip to the war-torn Ukrainian city of Mariupol in 2022, that Lvova-Belova spotted a child she liked the most from a group and decided she would take him home.

“I realise that I am truly growing attached to a child from the group,” Lvova-Belova says, speaking in a recent Russian Youtube video. “And really considering adopting [him].”

Filipp had been living with a foster family after his mother died. He was 16 when he was snatched and taken to live in Lvova-Belova’s family home.

“It was difficult for my son to get used to a new life in the family and in Russia, our rules and traditions,” she says of the teenager.

She recalled how the young Ukrainian attempted to hide and stay away from his new family, that he said he wanted to go back to his own country and that he missed his home and friends. They ignored his pleas. Instead, they began to indoctrinate him into Russian life, including making him consume Russian films and books, as well as exposing him to the Orthodox Church and Russian traditions.

The true record of Filipp’s traumatic abduction is not known, although friends and relatives say the boy was taken by Russia against his will.

And Filipp is not alone. He is one of around 19,500 children taken from Ukraine and placed in Russian institutions and foster homes, with some forcibly adopted and given new identities. This illegal transfer of young people is a war crime and has led to the International Criminal Court (ICC) issuing arrest warrants for Lvova-Belova and President Putin.

Lvova-Belova’s role in the mass abduction of these children has been logged by investigators at Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab.

Last month, The i Paper revealed how the Trump Administration was axing funding to this programme sparking outrage on both sides of the Atlantic from politicians and religious groups. The US President reversed his decision and agreed a six-week extension which has allowed the Lab to share its intelligence with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Europol.

And Yale have no doubts about the key role Lvova-Bevlova has played in this war crime: “Next to Putin himself, Lvova-Belova… is the most prominent figure responsible for the design and execution of the programme. Her responsibility for the programme has shaped some of its most consequential top-level policies.”

Who is Maria Lvova-Belova?

In Russia, Lvova-Belova is presented as the country’s greatest mother with her ten adoring children. Her official title is the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights and she was appointed by Putin in 2021, becoming responsible for all under 18s across the Federation. 

“You have very good experience, a lot of it – both in public work and in family work, raising your own children,” Putin reportedly said to Lvova-Belova when he made her appointment.

“The mission is extremely noble… I wish you success with all my heart,” he added.

Lvova-Belova comes from Penza, a typical city in western Russia. It was there she entered local government after being employed as a guitar teacher and working with children. From there, she rose into the Russian equivalent of the Senate.

“She is, in some respects, a bit of a nobody,” says James Nixey, who leads the Russia-Eurasia programme at Chatham House. “She has not had exactly a prolific career.”

Nixey says she stands out because of her dedicated belief in Putin’s vision for Russia.

“She would appear to be a true believer [and] quite frankly a fanatic.”

While her CV may prompt some to dismiss her, Nixey says the impact Lvova-Belova has on Russia’s mission to eradicate the Ukrainian identity is not to be underestimated.

“She’s an effective administrator. She has got the tools and the support to do a lot of damage as far as de-Ukrainianising Ukraine is concerned.”

Baking cookies and abducting children

A key part of Lvova-Belova’s role is how she presents herself and the message that sends to Russian citizens.

Photos and videos examined by this paper from her channel on Telegram (a social media app popular in Russia) paint a clear picture.

At home, she shows herself baking cookies with her children for Lent and watching their dance recitals, posting from her seat in the auditorium that she will “ask [my daughter’s] Guardian Angel to help” bless the performance.

At work, she kisses babies and hugs grieving war widows. She sits in meetings under portraits of Putin and opposite stern looking men in suits while smiling and wearing flowery pastel dresses, pearl earrings, with her blonde hair neatly pinned back.

Karolina Hird, the Institute for the Study of War’s Russia deputy team lead, says the aesthetic is very deliberate.

“She weaponises her identity as a mother and as a woman and someone who presents in a very kind of gentle feminine way to her advantage,” she explains.

“She presents in a very traditionally feminine and almost maternal sense… where she can say, ‘Oh, I’m a mother. I have so many children. I’ve adopted so many children. My life revolves around children’ in a way that distracts from the fact that she’s committing and enabling crimes of international law.”

This perception does not stretch into Ukraine.

Hird explains: “She’s seen, in my belief, rightly so, as a very evil person… the kind of Ukrainian perception of her is the woman who steals the children.”

Mykola Kubela, founder of Kyiv-based charity Save Ukraine, which helps to bring Ukrainian children back home, believes Lvova-Belova is working to assimilate these abducted children as quickly as possible to hide them.

“She weaponises her identity as a mother and as a woman and someone who presents in a very kind of gentle feminine way to her advantage”

“[She is aware] every Ukrainian stolen child is the witness of war crime… they can be a witness in a tribunal, in any court, about war crime, a crime against humanity. What Russia is doing now in occupied territories is genocide. It’s a cultural genocide.”

Lvova-Belova was not just earmarked for her role because of her maternal appeal, good looks and ability to work quickly. The politician’s religion and romantic relationships have also proved helpful to the Kremlin.

A fervent follower of the Russian Orthodox faith, she embodies many values promoted by the Russian state. This was first solidified by her marriage to Pavel Kogelman, an Orthodox priest, with whom she has five biological children and a number of adopted children. Last year she married oligarch Konstantin Malofeev in a glamorous wedding ceremony. Her new husband is one of the most powerful media figures in the country, whose TV company, Tsargrad, is profoundly pro-Orthodox and pro-Putin. Nationalist Malofeev has been sanctioned by the international community since 2014.

In March, she posted a smiling photo of the pair of them in occupied Ukraine, which she refers to as a “new region” of Russia.

“Donbass is a sacred place for the whole country and for our family. At the end of the business trip to new regions, my husband and I met in Donetsk. Each of us has our own ministry here: mine is helping children and families, and he is the Donbass Volunteer Union.”

Reflecting on Lvova-Belova’s new spouse, Hird explains: “Lvova-Belova’s proximity to traditional Russian family values, how that’s enabled by the Russian Orthodox Church, and her proximity to big sources of Russian nationalist power makes her a really interesting and unique person in the wider Kremlin ecosystem.”

“It means she is someone who’s very appropriately suited to orchestrate these sorts of crimes.”

How Russia changed how it talked about stealing children

Lvova-Belova’s Telegram channel is very active, offering her 40,000 subscribers regular updates on her work helping children in need in Russia, as well as showing her actions in the occupied territories or elsewhere in Ukraine.

Analysis by this paper found there was a change in the messaging around the forced relocation of Ukrainian children following the ICC issuing arrest warrants for Lvova-Belova and Putin in 2023.

Posts before the warrant used plain and direct language about Russia’s plans to move children over the border into Russia and to remove their Ukrainian identities.

One message, for example, praised the “simplified mechanism for issuing Russian citizenship to orphans and children without parental care from the DPR, LPR [occupied Ukrainian regions] and Ukraine”.

Hird corroborated The i Paper’s findings, saying “on the Russian side I think they’re being quieter about it. There’s less reporting on, for example, adoptions since the arrest warrant went out.”

Recent posts are more ambiguously worded. For example in March this year she posted: “We opened two youth centers in Makeyevka and Mariupol… [there were updates on] how children who were taken under guardianship in different regions of Russia live.”

Another from last month reads: “I started my trip to the Luhansk People’s Republic by meeting with its head, Leonid Pasechnik. I spoke in detail about the life of orphans taken into care by foster families from different regions of the country,” it read.

While the language in posts about these potential war crimes may be muted, Hird highlights that Ukrainian children are still being moved into and around Russia. A post on 30 March from another official Russian Telegram channel talked of children from Luhansk being taken to a “sanatorium” near Moscow for “rehabilitation”.

Will she ever face justice?

Lvova-Belova has not spoken frequently about the arrest warrant or the international condemnation of her work to abduct Ukrainian children.

Her Telegram makes references to ‘Western lies’ or ‘misinformation’, and at times she has remained defiant, writing in a comment that “no sanctions or arrest warrants will stop us”.

A year on from that remark, her attitude appears unchanged.

Putin’s Children’s Rights Commissioner spoke last month to a famous Russian Youtuber in a ‘tell-all’ interview which has been viewed almost 300,000 times.It touched upon her impending arrest – with Lvova-Belova making light of the ICC’s warrant.

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