Putin meets with government official at center of alleged Ukrainian children schemes

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Thursday with Maria Lvova-Belova, the official at the center of an alleged Russian government scheme to relocate, reeducate, and sometimes militarily train or forcibly adopt out Ukrainian children.

Lvova-Belova, whose official government title is Commissioner for Children’s Rights, has been sanctioned by several Western governments.

According to those countries – and a new report by Yale investigators, backed by the US State Department – she is at the center of a Russian government scheme to forcibly deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, often to a network of dozens of camps, where the minors undergo political reeducation.

Lvova-Belova was appointed to her position in 2021. Putin held a working meeting with her on Thursday at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence, in the Moscow region, to discuss the issues facing children in the Russia-annexed areas of Ukraine.

“You have been doing this for a long time, and I know that the amount of work is growing,” said Putin in video footage of the meeting released by the Kremlin. “The number of applications from our citizens regarding the adoption of children from the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, from the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions is also growing. The (Commissioner’s) Institute has been dealing with this issue for a long time, for almost nine years now.”

Lvova-Belova told Putin about her plans for a joint endeavor with the Ministry of Health related to “medical care for children in various areas.”

Lvova-Belova also told Putin about the “trial military-patriotic” camp she and regional leaders organized in Chechnya for 200 “difficult teenagers” who “committed offenses or were registered in the juvenile department.”

She did not specify where exactly it was held, but said that the mentors for “brave patriots” who had been involved in the fighting.

Llova-Belova asked for more support to help spread the initiative and hold camps in different regions of Russia’s Caucasus.

More on Putin’s so-called Commissioner for Children’s Rights: Lvova-Belova regularly visits Russian-occupied Ukraine, and the Russian government boasts of her personally escorting plane loads of children back from Ukraine.

Putin has empowered Lvova-Belova to use unspecified “additional measures” to identify children who don’t have parental care in the four Ukrainian regions it claims to have annexed.

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

 CNN’s Mick Krever and Jennifer Hansler contributed to this post.

Six Ukrainian power company repair workers were injured on Wednesday in Russian airstrikes on the city of Vovchansk in the Kharkiv region, according to regional authorities.

“The injured are specialists who were carrying out repair work on communication lines,” the head of the Kharkiv region military administration, Oleh Synehubov, said in a Telegram post. “The building of one of the enterprises and a private house were also damaged.”

One of the men — an employee of Kharkiv’s regional power company — was hospitalized with a blast injury. The injured workers range in age from 30 to 65, according to Synehubov.

Another attack on Vovchansk later on Thursday resulted in one civilian being wounded, with “life-threatening injuries,” Synehubov said.

Earlier this week, massive shelling and an airstrike in the city damaged 13 residential buildings and the national police building, according to Synehubov.

Russian strikes overnight “destroyed” the house of an elderly couple in the Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad, killing the wife, said Serhii Lysak, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk region military administration in an updated Telegram post.

At 3 a.m. local time (8:00 p.m. ET), a Russian missile fell near their yard, destroying the house and the 79-year-old woman died on the spot, Lysak added.

“The whole street looks like a horror movie” with “ruins, broken windows and doors, burned cars,” he said.

Russian forces launched a renewed attack on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure overnight, firing at least 36 missiles which killed at least one person, but Ukraine’s energy ministry says that electricity supplies are unaffected.

Elsewhere, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that his country will not send troops to Ukraine unless it is attacked, as tensions mount on the Belarus-Ukraine border ahead of a planned meeting between Lukashenko and close ally Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday.

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A local official has published photos showing the devastation caused by Russian strikes that killed at least one person in the Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad.

Serhii Lysak, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk region military administration, posted the photos on Telegram on Thursday, saying that they show “what the ‘Russian peace’ brought to Pavlohrad at night.”

Overnight strikes on the city, which is located in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, injured at least eight people, said Lysak.

More than 60 houses have been destroyed by shelling in the city, he added. 

Electricity generation across Ukraine is meeting demand despite a barrage of Russian airstrikes on critical infrastructure overnight, the country’s Energy Ministry said Thursday.

“On Thursday, February 16, for the fifth day in a row, electricity generation is sufficient to meet the needs of consumers,” the ministry said. 

Electricity generation will continue to meet demand and a reserve of power has been created, according to Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko.

More than half of the country’s electricity is generated by Rivne, Pivdennoukrainsk and Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plants, the ministry said. 

In the Odesa region, stabilization outages are possible due to grid repairs, the ministry said. 

Power engineers in the Kharkiv region completed repairs and restored power supply in Kupyansk and the surrounding areas, which were cut off the day before as a result of enemy shelling, the ministry said.

Ukraine’s national power company Ukrenergo confirmed that the latest Russian attacks won’t lead to limited energy consumption.

“Power plants generate enough electricity to cover the existing consumption,” Ukrenergo said in a statement Thursday.

“All types of power plants in the power system are operating, with thermal and hydro generation covering peak consumption in the morning and evening hours,” the company said, adding “electricity imports are declining as a result of the stabilization of the country’s electricity supply.”

Ukrenergo said if consumption increases, blackouts may be applied, but currently, there is no capacity deficit and therefore no limits to energy consumption. 

Some context: Russian forces have repeatedly targeted Ukrainian infrastructure in waves of strikes during the war, while Ukrainian engineers have battled to keep electricity, telecoms and water services running.

Finland and Sweden’s applications to join the NATO military alliance could be assessed separately, Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said Thursday.

“It is possible for us to assess the candidacy of Finland separately and this will no doubt be a topic that is discussed in the meetings we have today,” said Çavuşoğlu at a press conference in Ankara, Turkey alongside NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

“After the declaration that a different decision could be reached in relation to Finland, we discussed this matter with the countries involved and NATO,” he said.

Finland and Sweden both applied to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and all 30 member nations must approve their applications.

However Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to reject their bids, accusing the two countries of harboring members of the separatist militant Kurdistan’s Workers Party, also known as PKK, which seeks an independent state in Turkey.

Relations between Turkey and Sweden also deteriorated after Çavuşoğlu accused the Swedish government of being complicit in the burning of the Quran at a protest in Stockholm in January.

What NATO is saying about Finland and Sweden’s membership bid: On Thursday, NATO chief Stoltenberg said that “the main issue is not whether they are ratified together, the main issue is that Finland and Sweden are ratified as soon as possible.”

“My consistent position has been and remains that the time has come to ratify both Finland and Sweden and make them full members of our alliance. They have both made big steps since we signed the joint memorandum between Finland, Sweden, and Turkey in July at the NATO summit in Madrid last year,” Stoltenberg said.

“They have removed any restrictions on arms exports, strengthened their legislation on terrorism. And Sweden is also amending their constitution and stepped up the cooperation with Türkiye, also established a permanent mechanism to continue to work closely with Türkiye in the fight against terrorism,” he continued.

Stoltenberg added that “it’s the Turkish Government, the Turkish parliament, that decides on the issue over ratification, and it’s a Turkish decision alone.”

Two Ukrainian drones have been shot down overnight near the city of Sevastopol, on the Crimean Peninsula, according to a local Russian-backed official.

“The attack on the peninsula began overnight. In the Sevastopol area, the Air Defense Forces and the Black Sea Fleet shot down 2 of the 2 UAVs over the sea,” said Mikhail Razvozhaev, governor of Sevastopol, in a Telegram post. 

“Several more” UAVs were shot down over the waters around the peninsula, he said. 

Some context: Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. In January, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine will reclaim Crimea as it is “our land.”

The Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, suffered a “terrible night” as Russian missiles hit the city while residents were asleep, said Serhii Lysak, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk region military administration.

A 79-year-old woman died and seven people were injured, according to preliminary information, Lysak said in a Telegram post Thursday.

Two of the injured people, a 79-year-old man and a 37-year-old woman, were hospitalized. Their condition is assessed as moderate, Lysak said. 

“Industrial enterprise was damaged. A fire broke out there and has been extinguished by rescuers,” he said. 

Seven private houses were destroyed and 30 others were damaged, Lysak said. 

The Ukrainian military was able to shoot down five missiles fired over the region, he said.