Evidence is mounting that Ukrainian children who reside in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine are being taken out of their country.
The head of the Belarus Red Cross told Belarusian state television earlier this week that the organisation is bringing Ukrainian children across the border into Belarus for “rehabilitation.”
Belarus is a close ally of Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
“When they accused the Republic of Belarus of kidnapping children who come to us for rehabilitation—frankly speaking, the Belarusian Red Cross has been, and is, and will be actively involved in this,” Dzmitry Shautsou, chairman of the Belarus Red Cross, said.
His statements were made on Wednesday during a report that showed him visiting the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Lysychansk in the Luhansk region.
Shautsou said he was working with a state-backed charity to help “the children forget the horrors of the war and just rest; feel that there’s an island of happiness.”
Last month, Pavel Latushka, a Belarusian opposition activist, said he had material detailing the forced removal of 2,100 Ukrainian children from at least 15 Russian-occupied Ukrainian cities to Belarus. Pavel had documented that these children were under the guardianship of the Ukrainian state and had no one to care for them: many are orphans, children whose parents have lost their parental rights, and those with disabilities.
However, the definition of who qualifies as an orphan has been complicated by the war. According to other reports, “90% of Ukrainian children who were living in state care at the time of the invasion were ‘social orphans’, meaning they had relatives but those family members were unable to take care of them.” These ‘orphans,’ in many cases, have no one to care for them because their parents have been killed or indefinitely detained by Russian troops.
This is not the first time the question has arisen of children in Russian-occupied areas having been taken to Russia or its allied countries. Such reports have circulated since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Amnesty International published records in November, 2022, of Ukrainian children being separated, detained, and then abandoned during the early phases of ‘filtration,’ when Russia was performing security checks on Ukrainian citizens. According to this 11-year-old:
They took my mom to another tent. She was being questioned … They told me I was going to be taken away from my mom … I was shocked … They didn’t say anything about where my mom was going. A lady from Novoazovsk [child protection] service said maybe my mom would be let go … I didn’t get to see my mom … I have not heard from her since.
The Belarus Red Cross is the biggest humanitarian organisation in Belarus, The Guardian reports.
It is part of the international Red Cross movement, though country chapters work independently.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told The Guardian that it had learned of the deportations through the media and said the issues would be referred to its compliance committee, responsible for investigating any “alleged breaches of integrity.”
“These actions risk damaging the trust of our work in supporting communities in need, whoever they are, and whichever side of the frontlines they are on,” the federation said in a statement to the Associated Press.
The organisation also distanced itself from the Belarus Red Cross saying that it doesn’t speak on behalf of the federation “and his statements do not represent our views.”
The AP reported in April 2023 that the International Red Cross had confirmed that it has been in contact with Russian children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova regarding reuniting children separated from their parents.
Lvova-Belova and Russian President Vladimir Putin have both been charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court for taking children from Ukraine to Russia, which is against international law.
Russia said at an informal UN Security Council meeting that children were taken to Russia for rest and other health reasons and denied kidnapping them. According to an AP investigation, Lvova-Belova has been directly involved in the taking of Ukrainian children to Russia, where some were also adopted into Russian families.
