The position of the Commissioner for Children's Rights under the President of the Russian Federation was established by a decree of Dmitry Medvedev on September 1, 2009. By November 2026, the office turned 17, and during this time, only four people have held the post. As journalists Nina Nazarova and Svyatoslav Khomenko note in their book "Stolen Childhood," published in collaboration with the StraightForward Foundation, by the time the current Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova was appointed, the position had "been firmly associated with defending conservative values and supporting the Kremlin's policies for more than a decade." According to the authors, officials formally tasked with protecting the rights of minors were mostly busy with other matters: approving forced underage marriages in Chechnya, participating in the removal of Ukrainian children from their homeland, and advocating for restrictions on women's abortion rights.
The First Ombudsman: Resignation After Four Months
The first Commissioner for Children's Rights was Alexey Golovan, an engineer-physicist by education who retrained as a social worker and later as a lawyer in 1993. He engaged in social work even before obtaining his qualification: from 1989 to 1991, he worked as an inspector for the Bureau of Public Guardianship and later at the Soviet Children's Fund named after Lenin. In 1991, Golovan founded the charitable center "Complicity in Fate" (Soucastiye v sudbe), which he still runs today. When the regional institute of children's ombudsmen appeared in Russia in 2002, he was the first to hold the corresponding position at the federal level. However, just four months after his appointment by President Medvedev, Golovan resigned "of his own volition." Colleagues described this move as forced. Ella Pamfilova, then Chair of the Human Rights Council, called the resignation "shocking" and stated she could not imagine what forced Golovan to submit his resignation. Tatyana Tulchinskaya, director of the "Here and Now" foundation, noted that "usually, the phrasing 'of his own volition' hides a reluctance to wash dirty linen in public." Lyudmila Alexeyeva, chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group, stated bluntly: "It is obvious that this was done under pressure." Golovan himself still refuses to comment on the reasons for his resignation. After leaving office, he returned to providing targeted assistance to orphans and in 2012 became a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, which was liquidated by a Moscow City Court decision in 2023.
The Astakhov Era: Inspections, Television, and the Adoption Law
The second Commissioner for Children's Rights was Pavel Astakhov. Since 1991, he worked as a lawyer; among his clients were Valentina Solovyova, founder of the "Vlastilina" financial pyramid, Vladimir Gusinsky, head of Media-Most and NTV, as well as several show business stars. For several years, Astakhov hosted the popular TV show "Court Hour," as well as the programs "Three Corners with Pavel Astakhov" and "Astakhov's Case," wrote a series of detective novels about lawyer Artyom Pavlov, and was one of the leaders of the "For Putin" movement. During his first year and a half as ombudsman, Astakhov actively traveled to orphanages for inspections — according to his own data, he personally visited 1,248 institutions. His website almost daily published reports on accidents and incidents in orphanages. Under Astakhov, the position of child ombudsman was established in every region of the country. It was during this period that the law banning the adoption of orphans by foreigners was passed, which, according to the book's authors, was a response to the American "Magnitsky Act." Astakhov also supported one of Russia's first cases under the article on "rehabilitating Nazism."
Transformation of the Role and Current Status
By the time of Maria Lvova-Belova's appointment, as Nazarova and Khomenko document, the function of the position had transformed significantly: from a tool for protecting the rights of minors, it had turned into a platform for promoting a conservative agenda. The authors of "Stolen Childhood" describe in detail instances where current and former children's rights commissioners participated in approving forced underage marriages in Chechnya, facilitated the removal of Ukrainian children from the conflict zone, and advocated for restricting women's reproductive rights. According to "Expert" magazine, in 2026, President Vladimir Putin extended Maria Lvova-Belova's term as child ombudsman for another five-year period, which confirms the office's retention within the structure of presidential institutions and its continued functioning within the current political model.
Context: The Book "Stolen Childhood" and Independent Non-Fiction
Materials on the work of the child ombudsman institution in Russia were included in the book "Stolen Childhood" by Nina Nazarova and Svyatoslav Khomenko, published by Meduza in collaboration with the StraightForward Foundation, which supports the creation of uncensored non-fiction about Russia. In the work, the authors examine not only the formal powers of the commissioner but also specific mechanisms by which, they argue, the Russian authorities ensure it is impossible or undesirable for Ukrainian children to return from Russia to their homeland. The book has become one of the few systematic studies dedicated to the evolution of the child ombudsman institution from its creation in 2009 to its current state.
