Belarusian official defends recuperation program for Ukrainian children

May 6, Pozirk. More than 200 “Donetsk children” have vacationed in Belarus since 2022, said Dźmitryj Šaŭcoŭ, secretary general of the Belarusian Red Cross (BRC).

Six months earlier, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies suspended the BRC as a member over Šaŭcoŭ’s involvement in alleged transfers of children to Belarus for pro-Russian indoctrination.

The children come to the country for three weeks, learn its customs and relax, Šaŭcoŭ told reporters in Minsk. The BRC is not the main organizer, this is done by the foundation of Paralympian Alaksiej Tałaj, Šaŭcoŭ said.

In February 2024, Šaŭcoŭ, Tałaj and his foundation were included in the 13th package of EU sanctions against Russia. Tałaj was also included in the US sanctions list marking two years since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

Šaŭcoŭ called the international criticism of the transfers a “banal insinuation.”

“It is outrageous for reasonable people that some personal sanctions have been introduced against me and Alaksiej Kanstancinavič [Tałaj]. Why? Because we help children? Let’s take it as praise or even as a reward,” he said.

“If it is a violation for someone,” he continued, “it shows the absurdity, the theater of the absurd organized by our overseas neighbors . . . When they tried to prove that the Republic of Belarus kidnaps children, that the children who come to us don’t go back, our brains melted. We have proved the opposite. Children came to us and will come to us.”

According to various estimates, at least 2,500 children have been moved to Belarus from the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine since the war began.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, over alleged deportations of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine.

Belarusian pro-democracy forces seek a similar warrant for Alaksandar Łukašenka, who has admitted the displacement.

Also read: State TV shows Ukrainian children transferred to Belarus from Russian-occupied territory