Ukraine is investigating Belarus' suspected involvement in the forced transfer of minors from Russian-occupied territory, Reuters reported the prosecutor general’s office as saying. This declaration comes after an explosive report by the exiled Belarusian opposition which alleged that 2,150 Ukrainian children between the ages of six and 15 were shipped to so-called recreation camps and sanatoriums in Belarus. The group of political opponents to the government of President Alexander Lukashenko, National Anti-Crisis Management, said that the children were transferred to at least three locations in Belarus.
According to the report, Lukashenko personally ordered the transfer of orphans to Belarus and facilitated their arrival with financial and organisational support and further accused him of war crimes.
The office of Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin has opened criminal procedures into "the forced transportation/deportation of over 19,000 children" from the seized areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Luhansk, as reported by Reuters.
"The fact and circumstances of taking Ukrainian children from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine to the so-called 'recreational camps' in Belarus are currently under investigation in the mentioned criminal proceedings," it said.
The International Criminal Court, the world's permanent war crimes tribunal, issued arrest warrants in March for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children's rights ombudsman, Maria Lvova-Belova, on two charges of war crimes in connection with the relocation of hundreds of Ukrainian children to Belarus.
A children rights’ law specialist and University College London assistant professor, Yulia Ioffe said that if corroborated, Belarus would "highly likely" be violating the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Ioffe further added that if there is sufficient evidence, the actions of Belarus may also amount to a crime against humanity of ‘deportation or forcible transfer of population’ under the Rome Statute of the ICC.
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The report said that Ukrainian children were brought to the Belarusian Golden Sands Sanatorium in the Gomel area, as well as the Ostroshitsky Gorodok Sanatorium and Dubrava camp in the Minsk region. The transfers of minors to Belarus were illegal and violated the Geneva Conventions and the statute of the International Criminal Court, the report said.
According to the report, the first group of approximately 350 children arrived from the seized Donetsk region on September 5 and 6, followed by the second and third groups in late September and mid-October Additional transfers were performed in April and May of this year.
The children were taken by bus to Russia from Russian-held territories of Ukraine and then to Belarus by train.