![A young Ukrainian woman shields her children as they walk through an area hit by a missile strike in Mykolaiv on July 20, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. [Oleksii Filippov/AFP]](/cnmi_ca/images/2023/07/28/43198-ua_children-739_416.webp)
KYIV -- Rights activists are demanding that the International Criminal Court (ICC) issue an arrest warrant for Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka for his alleged role in deporting children from Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories to Russia.
Some 2,150 Ukrainian children are believed to have been taken to at least four camps in Belarus since September 2022, with the number expected to reach 3,000 by fall this year, The Telegraph reported July 17.
Lukashenka and other Belarusian officials have been linked to the illegal deportations, according to evidence submitted to the ICC.
"We want to show the world that such activity [being] organised precisely by Mr [Lukashenka] is a war crime," Pavel Latushka, director of the Belarusian opposition group National Anti-Crisis Management, told The Telegraph. His group submitted the accusations.
![A photograph taken on April 3 shows children's drawings in the basement of a school where villagers were kept for almost a month by Russian troops in Yagidne village, north of Kyiv, a year after the liberation of the settlement from Russian occupation. Soon after the invasion, the Russians forced 367 people -- nearly the entire population of Yagidne -- into a school basement measuring 200 square metres. The villagers including a six-week-old baby were kept there for almost month, and 11 of them died. [Sergei Supinsky/AFP]](/cnmi_ca/images/2023/07/28/43196-ua_children_1-739_416.webp)
A photograph taken on April 3 shows children's drawings in the basement of a school where villagers were kept for almost a month by Russian troops in Yagidne village, north of Kyiv, a year after the liberation of the settlement from Russian occupation. Soon after the invasion, the Russians forced 367 people -- nearly the entire population of Yagidne -- into a school basement measuring 200 square metres. The villagers including a six-week-old baby were kept there for almost month, and 11 of them died. [Sergei Supinsky/AFP]
![Ukrainian refugee children are pictured as they sleep in a kindergarten in Budapest, Hungary, on April 18. Most Ukrainian refugees pass through Hungary quickly moving further west -- but it can be unbearably tough for those who stay. [Attila Kisbenedek/AFP]](/cnmi_ca/images/2023/07/28/43197-ua_children_2-739_416.webp)
Ukrainian refugee children are pictured as they sleep in a kindergarten in Budapest, Hungary, on April 18. Most Ukrainian refugees pass through Hungary quickly moving further west -- but it can be unbearably tough for those who stay. [Attila Kisbenedek/AFP]
"In our opinion, [he] is the main [individual] responsible for the forcible displacement of these children to Belarus … he directly gave instructions on organising the financing of these processes," Latushka said.
In March, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia's commissioner for children’s rights, for the alleged forced deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children into Russia since the weeks before Russia's invasion in late February 2022.
More than 19,500 children have been forcibly transferred by Russian authorities, Ukrainian authorities estimate, according to The Telegraph.
Under international agreements, the deportation of a civilian population is considered a war crime and forcible transfers of children of one group to another group amount to genocide.
Some of the Ukrainian children taken to Belarus are believed to have been sent on to Russia.
The number of children who have been deported to Belarus may actually be much higher, according to Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer for the Kyiv-based Regional Centre for Human Rights.
About 6,000 children may have been deported to Belarus, based on her estimates.
"They're doing horrifying things to [the children] there," Rashevska told Caravanserai.
In Belarus, the children are forced to speak Russian and sing the Russian anthem, according to Rashevska.
"It's obvious that this is a violation of both international humanitarian law and children's rights," Rashevska said.
She pointed to interviews with children who say that they hate Ukraine and want to be soldiers.
"This is military propagandist indoctrination. It's being conducted in Belarus too," she said.
Who's involved?
"There's an entire hierarchy of criminal authority in Belarus ... Lukashenka doesn't just support it through what he says but also with concrete actions," Rashevska said.
The scheme to deport Ukrainian children is being overseen by Alexey Talai, a Belarusian Paralympic athlete who is close to the government, Yevhen Mahda, a political analyst and director of the Institute of World Policy, told Caravanserai.
"The scheme to deport Ukrainian children from territory not controlled by Ukraine was put in motion a long time ago. But after the full-scale aggression began, it took on an entirely different resonance," Mahda said, referring to the Russian invasion that began in February 2022.
"Talai is working on this directly. Lukashenka is attached to it more, of course, on political grounds ... Belarus is a 'super-presidential' republic, so he's accountable for everything," she said.
The Belarusian chapter of the Red Cross has allegedly been involved in the deportations.
Dmitry Shevtsov, the director of the Belarusian Red Cross, revealed this involvement himself during a trip to the Donbas region of Ukraine.
"Belarus has been accused of kidnapping children who are coming to our country to recover. The Belarusian Red Cross has actively been involved, and is involved now, and will continue to be involved in this," Shevtsov said in a July 19 interview with the state Belarus 1 TV channel. That interview later disappeared from the internet.
"We have contacted the Belarus Red Cross to express our grave concern and to stop any similar activity in the future," the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said in a statement July 19.
Ukraine demands justice
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office has already opened an investigation of the Belarusian Red Cross.
"Belarus Red Cross' involvement in the forcible deportation of Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied territories to Belarus is co-perpetration in the commission of an international crime," Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin tweeted Sunday (July 23) in English.
"As an organisation, it is blatantly violating the norms of the Four GCs [Geneva Conventions] and API [Additional Protocol I], as well as the Fundamental Principles of the Movement."
Ukrainian authorities have demanded that the ICC issue an arrest warrant for Shevtsov.
"We knew that something like this was happening, but unfortunately, there wasn't such direct evidence before," Myroslava Kharchenko, a lawyer with Save Ukraine, an NGO that helps repatriate children from Russia, told Caravanserai.
Shevtsov's acknowledgment constitutes such direct evidence, she said.
"We're now taking steps with the goal of determining where these children are and, of course, returning them to Ukraine ... We're conducting our own investigation, and I think that we will soon repatriate our children from Belarus," Kharchenko said.
Sooner or later the Russian and Belarusian authorities will end up on trial for illegally deporting Ukrainian children, rights activists and lawyers say.
"I'm confident that in the near future the [ICC] will issue an arrest warrant for Lukashenka, just like the one it already put out for Putin," Kharchenko said.
