A Russian woman was arrested and charged with child trafficking after she adopted a teenager who hailed from Mariupol, Ukraine.
The woman, identified as Irina Rudnitskaya, is one of the most public figures in Russia's controversial "adoption" of minors who have been forcibly removed from occupied Ukraine. She now faces up to a decade in jail on child-trafficking charges.
Russian Woman Charged With Child Trafficking
Rudnitskaya is known to head an organization that advocates for "family values" and supports foster parents. She was originally arrested on Oct. 30 and was placed in pretrial detention, where she will stay until Nov. 22.
She is a clinical psychologist and mother of 12 adopted children who has repeatedly sought to avoid being imprisoned for the sake of her dependents. Rudnitskaya's lawyer said that they are planning to appeal her detention.
Russian authorities have not provided any other details about Rudnitskaya's case, which also involves two other women who have been jailed as well. The defendant was said to have previously enlisted in the military to cope with the grief of losing her two-year-old daughter, according to Meduza.
She also served at a hospital in Shali, where she reportedly experienced the Second Chechen War firsthand. After suffering from health complications, she started to adopt children before launching a foster parent school in 2013. She later started Family Commonwealth in 2017, and in 2023, she was honored by the Moscow regional governor's office for public service.
Rudnitskaya is most known for adopting Ukrainian teenager Bogdan Yermokhin, who was taken from Mariupol during Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He was brought to Russia with his friend Filipp Golovnya in the summer of 2022. The latter was placed under the guardianship of Russia's presidential children's rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova.
Taking Ukraine's Children
Reports noted that Yermokhin's parents died when he was only eight years old and that he was studying at a metallurgical college when the invasion started. After the occupation of Mariupol, he and more than 30 other children were transported to Donetsk before being relocated to the Polany rehabilitation center near Moscow, Censor reported.
The situation comes as Ukraine has previously produced a list of nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children that officials say were forcibly deported to Russia, which is a potential war crime. Ukrainian authorities believe that the actual numbers could be much higher.
On the other hand, Moscow has denied the accusations, saying that the children were taken into Russian territory for their own safety, as per BBC.
