The BBC reported that the 70-year-old leader of a pro-Kremlin political party, Sergei Mironov, has adopted a child, now 2 years old, who was taken from an orphanage in the Ukrainian city of Kherson last year.

According to the BBC, Mironov was "named on the adoption record of a 2-year-old girl who was taken in 2022 by a woman he is now married to."

The child's original name is Margarita, but her identity was changed after she was taken to Russia, the BBC reported, adding that the girl was one of 48 children who went missing from the Kherson regional orphanage after Russian forces seized the southern Ukrainian city.

Mironov denied the report and called the investigation a "hysteric fake unleashed by Ukrainian special services and their Western curators."

Russia has been accused of forcibly deporting thousands of Ukrainian children from schools, hospitals and orphanages in parts of the country controlled by its forces.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children's commissioner for "the war crime of unlawful deportation ... and transfer" of children from Ukraine to Russia.