Lithuania to investigate Łukašenka’s role in deportation of Ukrainian children to Belarus

June 10, BPN. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis informed Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė about the role of Alaksandr Łukašenka’s regime in the illegal transfer of Ukrainian children to Belarus, the Lithuanian foreign ministry reported.

Landsbergis requested the prosecutor general to assess the data he received from Belarusian democratic leader Śviatlana Cichanoŭskaja and include it in the ongoing pre-trial investigation of Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine or launch a new one.

Over 2,000 Ukrainian children, mostly orphans, were reportedly sent from the Russian-held Ukrainian territories to summer camps in Belarus, presumably instructed by Belarusian authorities or with their consent.

Illegal deportation or relocation of civilians qualify as crimes against humanity and war crimes, he noted. Lithuania needs to investigate the potential complicity of Belarusian authorities, including senior officials, in war crimes in Ukraine and against the Ukrainian people, he stressed.

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  Łukašenka and all Belarusian officials involved in deportations.

On June 3, former Russian envoy in Belarus Dmitry Mezentsev said that 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. 

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.