A Russian woman said that during one of her trips to the temporarily occupied part of Kherson region, she took a 4-year-old Ukrainian girl from there, and is now planning to adopt her. The woman told this at a meeting with Kremlin leader Putin on Thursday, March 6, 2025. The Suspilne investigative editorial office has found out who this woman is, in what family the Ukrainian girl may end up, and why this is a violation of the international law.
She came to Putin to ask for benefits
The speech of the representative of the organization "Wife and mother of a hero. Crimea" at the meeting with Putin became viral on both Ukrainian and Russian social networks. The woman said:
"One of our new directions is helping children who were left without parents in "historical" territories. There have already been several trips and there will be more, but during the first trip to Kherson region, we found our daughter. Now she is in the family, under guardianship, but we are working on it."
"How old is she?" Putin asked.
"Four years old."
Video fragment of the meeting with Putin. Video source: Serhii Sternenko’s Telegram channel
At the end of the conversation with Putin, the woman thanked him "on behalf of all Crimean people for the "Crimean spring" (this term is used in the Russian official rhetoric to refer to the events related to the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014)" and said that the final point for the families of the dead occupiers would be the victory of the Russian Federation:
"We are really looking forward to victory. It seems to me that our sons will finally rest when there is peace. But we must go to the end; we must not yield to anyone."
The woman, who spoke with Putin, is Olga Dorokhina. She is from the city of Yelets, Lipetsk region of the Russian Federation, but in 2016, her family moved to annexed Simferopol. The woman’s eldest son, Vladislav Dorokhin, had entered a university, but did not graduate and joined the army. He was a sailor in the Black Sea fleet, and when Russia started the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he went to fight as part of the 810th Marine Brigade. Dorokhin died in June 2022 in Donetsk region. He was 21 years old.
After the death of her eldest son, Olga Dorokhina joined the regional organization "Wife and mother of a hero. Crimea" and, according to her, began traveling with "humanitarian missions" to the occupied territories of Ukraine. During one of the trips, she took away a 4-year-old Ukrainian girl from of Kherson region.
Olga Dorokhina’s page on the Russian social network features numerous photos of her deceased son and videos from events honoring him. There is not a single photo or post about the child the woman wants to adopt.
In Simferopol, a school was named in honor of Vladislav Dorokhin, and a class of "young Dorokhin followers" was opened there. It is another military class among those that the Russians are launching in the occupied Ukrainian territories. Earlier, the journalists of the Suspilne investigative editorial office told how Russia is turning Ukrainian children into Russian soldiers.
Alexander Dorokhin, Olga’s husband, is a former officer of the FSIN (Federal Penitentiary Service of the Russian Federation) and a veteran of the Chechen war. In an interview to "Moscow Komsomolets in Crimea", he said that from 2008 he worked as the head of the educational work department at the Yelets correctional colony. In Simferopol, he worked in a similar position at the local colony and retired in 2017. On his page on the Russian social network, Dorokhin posts photos and videos dedicated to his deceased son, as well as photos from the war in Chechnya and from events in honor of FSIN veterans.
"The forcible transfer of children from one group to another is considered to be a crime of genocide"
On the page of the organization "Wife and mother of a hero. Crimea" on the Russian social network, we did not find any photos that could confirm the "humanitarian" trips. The description says that the project was organized in Crimea in early 2023, and its main mission is to support the families of the Russian military personnel. The vast majority of photos on the page are of mothers and wives of the deceased Russian military personnel.
Thus, it is not yet known from where exactly in Kherson region Olga Dorokhina took the 4-year-old child. In a comment to the Suspilne journalists, Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer for the NGO "Regional Center for Human Rights", assumed that the girl could be from the Kherson orphanage, from where in 2022 the Russian military took orphans in ambulances to an unknown destination.
On Russian websites, we found information that 50 children aged 4 months to 4 years were brought from this orphanage to Simferopol. Of these, 20 children were given to families. The "minister of social policy" of the occupation administration of Kherson region, Alla Barkhatnova, reported this to the Russian "RIA Novosti". Some of the children were placed in the Simferopol orphanage "Yolochka".
"If this child was not a status child before the start of the full-scale invasion, this could be classified as a kidnapping. However, we would have heard about it. The parents would have looked for an opportunity to somehow contact and find their child. Or this can be a so-called "war orphan", that is, a child whose parents were killed or detained during the filtration procedure, etc. If this is a status child, then we must understand that she was small at the start of the full-scale invasion, and such children were in only one institution — the Kherson Regional Children’s Home," says Rashevska.
According to the lawyer, there is no article in the international humanitarian law that would prohibit guardianship and adoption:
"However, the forcible transfer of children from one group to another is considered to be a crime of genocide. Another issue is that in order to prove that the stepparents committed the crime of genocide, we must clearly demonstrate that they acted with the intent to destroy the Ukrainian ethnic group. That is, when we talk about the families of the Russian military personnel, it is possible that such a connection can be demonstrated because they completely supported this entire Putin’s operation, supported it with their actions, went to serve in the army and participated in the so-called "Special military operation" (this is how Russian propaganda calls the war in Ukraine — Ed.)."
Kateryna Rashevska adds that the actions of the Russian woman can be qualified as an unjustified delay in the repatriation of children, that is, their unjustified withholding from returning to their families or country of origin after the disappearance of the circumstances that led to their displacement. Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions indicates that the unjustified delay in the repatriation of civilians is a serious violation of the international humanitarian law and is considered to be a war crime. This unjustified delay, Rashevska says, can also be combined with deportation or forcible displacement:
"Regarding the case of this woman, if she took this girl directly from Kherson region and forcibly moved her to Crimea, then this is a war crime — forced displacement. In addition, it is also an unjustified delay in repatriation, because the woman does not want to return the child and we see in her words in the video the intention not to limit herself to guardianship. She says, "It is guardianship yet." That is, the next step is adoption. There are no other forms. This is the intention to leave the child under own control forever, and this may be qualified as a war crime. In any case, we are talking about serious violations of the rights of the child. A child cannot grow up in a family, in which the father is an employee of the Federal Penitentiary Service. They cannot raise a child with a Ukrainian identity. And this means that this is a violation of Article 8 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which ensures the right to preserve one’s own identity."
The human rights activist adds that the Dorokhin family is hiding the child so that Ukraine does not find out who this child is and does not begin the process of returning the child to the territory of Ukraine.
"We have identified the children from the Kherson Regional Children’s Home. We have photos; we know their last names, first names, and patronymics. And Ukraine knows who these children are," says the lawyer.
As part of a study conducted in late 2023 – early 2024, the Regional Center for Human Rights identified 85 Russian so-called stepparents, who are home to about 150 Ukrainian children. As of March 2025, Ukrainian children remain in Russian families. According to Kateryna Rashevska, almost 13% of these children are in the families of the military personnel. This is the second largest group of people by profession to whom Ukrainian children were given. The first group includes representatives of education, the human rights activist says.