Russia’s State Duma appoints new human rights commissioner. Meduza sources say filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov backed her appointment.
Russia’s State Duma has appointed Yana Lantratova as the country’s human rights commissioner.
Lantratova, 37, replaces Tatyana Moskalkova, whose second five-year term as ombudsman expired in April. Under Russian law, the human rights commissioner cannot serve more than two terms.
Yana Lantratova
Yevgeny Messman / TASS / Profimedia
Lantratova comes from the Young Guard of United Russia and has served as a State Duma deputy representing A Just Russia since 2021.
Meduza reported that she had the backing of Andrei Yarin, the head of the domestic policy directorate of Russia’s Presidential Administration, who has close ties to the security services. She emerged as the leading candidate for the post with the support of filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov, according to a Meduza source close to the presidential administration and a source inside the State Duma.
In Ukraine, Lantratova faces accusations of deporting children from Ukrainian regions. Ukraine’s Security Service says that during the occupation of Kherson, Lantratova and Inna Varlamova — the wife of A Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov — forcibly took two underage children from a local children’s home to Russia. As media reported, Mironov and Varlamova adopted a one-year-old girl abducted in Kherson and changed her name.
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