How Russian officials and their collaborators...

At the end of April, a man who called himself the “Navigator,” flanked by armed soldiers, ordered Smoliakov to transfer the children back to the Kherson Regional Children’s Home. Smoliakov complied.

The Russian authorities then fired the director of the home because she refused to cooperate with the occupiers. They appointed a local paediatrician named Tetiana Zavalska in her place. Zavalska later took part in a Russian state TV documentary that sought to portray Moscow’s rule in Kherson as benign.

“I’ve been waiting for this for 30 years,” she said in the documentary.

In August, two Russian women arrived in Kherson and paid a visit to the Regional Children’s Home. Reuters has identified the pair as Yana Lantratova, a member of the Russian parliament, and Inna Varlamova, a member of parliament staff, according to records dated 2021.

At the home, Lantratova and Varlamova were photographed alongside the Russianappointed health minister at the time, Vadym Ilmiiev, and Zavalska, the home’s new director. None of them responded to requests for comment for this article.

Varlamova also visited Kherson Regional Children’s Hospital, according to staff there who identified her from a photo shown to them by a Reuters reporter. Varlamova and another unidentified Russian woman, accompanied by Russian soldiers, had come to see two baby patients from the children’s home, Illia Vashchenko and Marharyta Prokopenko. Reuters couldn’t determine why they wanted to see the two children.

The infants were being treated for a cough – and medical staff told the visiting Russians they were too sick to be discharged because they had a fever. The Russian women spoke to the hospital director, Viktor Burdovitsyn, newly appointed by the occupiers, and the two infants were duly discharged back to the children’s home. Burdovitsyn didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article.

By fall of 2022, Ukraine’s armed forces were steadily advancing towards Kherson. Tens of thousands of Russian troops began retreating to the left bank of the Dnipro River. Russian-installed officials made preparations to evacuate some of the civilian population.

There were now 48 children in the Regional Children’s Home.

Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary attend the New Year’s reception for officers from the Armed Forces and the National Emergency Management Agency, as well as invited representatives of major national organizations and the royal patronage, at Christiansborg Castle in Copenhagen, Denmark January 4, 2024. (Reuters photo)