Russian official, prolific proselytizer on social networks, is at the center of the alleged plot of Ukrainian minors

UN: Evidence of torture of children in invasion of Ukraine 0:35

(CNN) --

If you read Maria Lvova-Belova's social media feeds, you might think that Russia is selflessly rescuing Ukrainian children from evil and placing them in the care of Russian families desperate to share their love.

But according to the US and European governments, and a new report by Yale researchers, backed by the US State Department, she is at the center of a Russian government plan to forcibly deport thousands of Ukrainian minors to Russia, often to a network of dozens of camps, where the minors undergo political re-education.

"Maria Lvova-Belova is one of the figures most implicated in Russia's deportation and adoption of Ukrainian minors, as well as the use of camps to 'integrate' Ukrainian minors into Russian society and culture," he wrote. the Yale Humanitarian Research Laboratory's Conflict Observatory.

Lvova-Belova, who was appointed Russian President Vladimir Putin's commissioner for Children's Rights in 2021, created her Telegram channel days after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Between photos with the high sphere of Russian power, from Putin to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, passing through the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, he publishes photos and videos where he highlights the wonderful life that they supposedly offer Ukrainian children.

• Report reveals that the Russian government runs a network of camps where it has held thousands of Ukrainian children since the start of the war

Maria Lvova-Belova began her career as a guitar teacher for minors.

She over time became involved in local politics, working her way into the Russian power structure.

Credit: Ria Novosti/Sputnik/AP

"By the end of the week, one hundred and eight orphans from Donbas who have received Russian citizenship will have parents," Lvova-Belova wrote in a typical post on her Telegram channel last July, using the Russian spelling for the Donbas regions of Ukraine ( Donetsk and Luhansk).

"Shurochka was the first to be handed over to her mother. When I heard the laughter of this happy child, I couldn't hold back [the tears]."

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Lvova-Belova regularly visits Russian-occupied Ukraine, and the Russian government boasts that she personally escorts planeloads of children returning from Ukraine.

Putin has empowered Lvova-Belova to use unspecified "additional measures" to identify children without parental care in the four Ukrainian regions she claims to have annexed.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Organization, has stated that "adoption should never take place during or immediately after emergencies" and that during upheavals it cannot be taken for granted that children separated from their parents will be orphans.

In addition, the UN considers that forcibly transferring the population of another country within or outside its borders is a war crime.

Russia has called reports of forced removals "absurd" and said it is doing "everything possible" to keep the children with their families.

In another typical post, from December, Lvova-Belova distributed photos sitting at a table with a Russian family in the Kaluga region.

"I'll be frank, I was crossing the threshold with concern: how have they settled in, do they have everything they need, how have relationships with parents and other children in the family worked out?" she wrote.

"But all doubts were dispelled in the first minutes. The family is wonderful."

"For me, this is further confirmation that the work we have done in placing orphans in Donbas is not in vain. Everything has been done well."

The United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom have sanctioned her for her alleged role in the plot.

"Lvova-Belova's efforts specifically include the forced adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families, the so-called 'patriotic upbringing' of Ukrainian children, legislative changes to speed up the granting of Russian Federation citizenship to Ukrainian children, and the deliberate removal of Ukrainian children by Russian forces," the US Treasury said in September.

She revels in the designation.

"My thanks to the British for the attention they have paid to our mission to help the children of Donbas," he wrote in June.

"In Russia we enjoy friendship as families, as organizations and, from now on, as affected by sanctions."

The shocking destruction of a Russian rocket launcher in Ukraine 0:44

From guitar teacher to politician

Lvova-Belova is the mother of at least ten children, some biological and others adopted with her husband, who is an Orthodox priest.

Lvova-Belova was born in the western city of Penza.

She began her career as a children's guitar teacher.

She over time became involved in local politics, working her way into the Russian power structure.

In a sad television report published on her Telegram channel in November, Lvova-Belova recalled adopting a teenager from Mariupol, who she said had been put on the street by guardians who took him in after his mother died of cancer.

"She's the most beautiful person I've ever met in my life," Filip says of his adoptive mother.

"I never had anyone who loved me as much as she did."

The circumstances in which the young man gave the interview are not clear, not even if he made statements under duress.

For Ukrainian children, Lvova-Belova implemented a program called "The Day After Tomorrow" to help ease their integration into Russian life.

Along with idyllic photos of campfires by the Black Sea, he said last August that Ukrainian children in the Donetsk region are in for an "extraordinary camping season."

"The camp has nine thematic workshops for adolescents to develop their life plans and their professional orientations. We can't wait for the opening of the camp."

The Russian embassy in Washington on Wednesday dismissed as "absurd" the US accusations that the Ukrainian children were forcibly removed.

"We take note of the absurd statements of State Department spokesman Ned Price, who had accused our country of 'forcibly transferring and deporting Ukrainian children' to the territory of the Russian Federation," the embassy said in a statement on Telegram.

"Russia accepted children who had been forced to flee with their families from the shelling and atrocities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. We do everything possible to ensure that children remain with their families and, in the event of the absence or death of parents and relatives, to transfer orphans under guardianship. We guarantee the protection of their lives and well-being."

The embassy then accused Washington, which has provided military aid to the Ukrainian armed forces, of being complicit in the alleged deaths of children in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.

-- Olena Mankovska contributed to this reporting.

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