Russian official claims Ukrainian children sent to Belarus’ summer camps legally

June 4, BPN. Over 2,000 children from Ukraine’s breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk stayed in the Minsk region’s summer camps to improve their health, Dmitry Mezentsev, state secretary of the Union State and a former Russian envoy in Belarus, told journalists.

The children’s parents were informed of their transfer to Belarus and all necessary papers were in order, he claimed.

Kyiv considers such practices as illegal deportation. Ukrainian prosecutors are currently investigating the forced deportation of over 19,000 children from the occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Kharkiv regions.

On March 17, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, seeking to bring them to account for the alleged deportations of children from Ukraine.

A report prepared by the Belarusian opposition politician Pavieł Łatuška says that at least 2,150 Ukrainian kids had been transferred to Belarus. Twelve of them are orphans who have been identified, it noted.

The politician and his team presented the report to the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and the Ukrainian Prosecutor General. They seek accountability for Alaksandr Łukašenka and all Belarusian officials involved in deportations.