The Belarusian opposition in exile has accused President Alexander Lukashenko of approving the forcible transfer of 2,100 Ukrainian children from at least 15 Russian-occupied Ukrainian cities.
Pavel Latushka, an exiled Belarus former culture minister who now heads National Anti-Crisis Management, a shadow government-like organization created by Belarusian opposition, said he had handed the evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 27.
"Ukrainian children, who were under the guardianship of the Ukrainian state, including orphans, children with disabilities and those whose parents were stripped of their parental rights, have been illegally transferred into the territory of Belarus," Latushka .
"The materials handed over to the prosecutors prove that Lukashenko has the documents under the auspices of the so-called union state of Russia and Belarus that provided a basis for organizing and funding the transfer of Ukrainian children to Belarus."
Also on June 27, National Anti-Crisis Management released a statement saying it had presented the ICC that, along with Lukashenko, those involved in the illegal transfers included Belarusian Paralympic athlete Alexey Talay, head of the "WeTogether" organization; Union State of Russia and Belarus State Secretary Dmitry Mezentsev; and Ivan Golovaty, CEO of Belarus' state-owned Belaruskali enterprise.
They had "committed war crimes in the form of illegal transfer of Ukrainian children from the Russian-occupied territories to Belarus and their re-education," the statement read.
The National Anti-Crisis Management statement included a video of Ukrainian children attending a pro-Putin propaganda session at the Dubrava camp in Belarus.
The following day, June 28, Lukashenko denied his government was involved in the from Ukraine and called Latushka's allegations "madness."
during his press conference:
That is misleading.
Lukashenko admitted to reporters that he had funded a program to bring Ukrainian children to Belarus through the Russia-Belarus union state budget.
He described his involvement with Talay's WeTogether this way: "He has been going there and back, fetching those kids. He called me a dozen times."
Talay ostensibly called Lukashenko's office to elicit support for rehabilitation camps, and the Belarusian president worked out the financing for the initiative with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
While WeTogether is apparently funded by charitable donations and joint Belarusian-Russian government support, recent investigations found deeper ties to government resources. WeTogether hosts events at the Dubrava camp, owned by the Belaruskali enterprise.
is a state-owned fertilizer manufacturer and one of the world's largest exporters of potash. The U.S. Treasury Department the firm in 2021 to limit the financial benefits it provides to Lukashenko's regime.
The Dubrava camp's program in Belarus is designed like the Russian "re-education" programs that have been widely criticized internationally for subjecting Ukrainian children to Kremlin propaganda and brainwashing.
The program's sponsors tout its restorative qualities and insist are sources of fun and relief for the children. But Nathaniel Raymond of the Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab pointed out that the quality of treatment is no guarantee of compliance with international law: "[T]hey can be given caviar every day, riding horses and having the best day ever, and it's still a war crime."
Alexey Talay back on April 28 that his program was operating with appropriate legal safeguards and rejected the oversight of international courts: "These threats and this international so-called court have no effect on the territories of certain states, since it is our right, so to speak, to accept the rules of the game or not."
Talay justified the abduction of Ukrainian children as lawful by insisting that they are taken from the "territory of the Russian Federation" — echoing the Kremlin's false description of the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine.
In May, Andrzej Sados, Poland's permanent representative to the European Union, said he had received a letter from Latushka stating that 2,000 children, largely from the occupied parts of Ukraine, had been sent to sanatoriums and summer camps in Belarus, and that Talay's charity was among the groups responsible for unlawful deportations of Ukrainian children to Belarus.
Sados said the EU to impose sanctions on the Belarusian government for the deportations.
in a July 1 article how "legal tricks have played out before the eyes of some Ukrainian parents" in these "relief programs."