Belarusian Red Cross Chairman comments on Lukashenko's regime's involvement in Ukrainian children's abduction

He said this on the air of the state television channel STV.

According to him, Ukrainian children in Europe seem to have become a "bargaining chip" for a long time.

"Unfortunately, this is true. We have been observing this for some time. Children's identities are being erased, children are being removed from their families, transferred to pedophile families, transferred to homosexual families. Gender is being erased. What is this?" he said.

Shevtsov said that when Ukrainian children from the occupied territories are brought to Belarus, they are "given a holiday."

The official also echoed Belarusian propaganda narratives regarding the deportation of Ukrainian children, including claims that Ukrainian children in Europe are supposedly being raped and “trafficked for organs”.

Deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia

In the context of a full-scale invasion, Russia is deporting Ukrainian children en masse from the occupied territories of Ukraine. They are taken to the occupied Crimea, Russia or Belarus, allegedly for rehabilitation or to rest in camps.

On March 17, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Russian Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova. They are suspected of forcibly deporting Ukrainian children.

On May 13, at a briefing in Rome with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he knew of more than 19,300 children deported by the Russians. On May 29, Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets spoke at an informal meeting of the UN Security Council on the issue of Russia's abduction of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine. The Ombudsman said that Russia deliberately changes legislation to make it impossible for Ukrainian children to return home and uses, among other things, the forced change of their citizenship to Russian.

Lubinets also noted that Russia does not provide any data on Ukrainian deported children - it is not even known where they are and in what conditions. He also said that Russians use child labor and militarize Ukrainian children in the temporarily occupied territories.

On June 8, a US Senate committee supported a draft resolution condemning the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russia and calling the occupiers' actions genocide.

Later, evidence emerged of Belarus' involvement in the deportation of Ukrainian children. On June 27, the Belarusian opposition submitted evidence to the International Criminal Court of the involvement of the self-proclaimed head of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and his entourage in war crimes.

On July 18, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called on UN countries to join forces and force Russia to return to Ukrainian parents and their children taken against their will to Russia during the war in Ukraine. On August 1, the US State Department called on Russia to stop deporting Ukrainian children from the occupied territories and to return them home.

On August 10, the National Resistance Center reported that Russian forces took teenagers from the temporarily occupied territories of the Donetsk region to military camps in Russia. The teenagers are being trained there, among other things.

On August 11, the self-proclaimed President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko confirmed that forcibly deported Ukrainian children are held in his country. He added that Russia, Belarus would continue to take children from Ukraine.

On September 24, the lower house of Canada's parliament unanimously passed a resolution condemning the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, calling such actions of the occupiers war crimes and genocide.

In October, the International Red Cross called on the Belarusian branch of the organization to dismiss the head of the organization, Dzmitry Shevtsov, who had previously confirmed his involvement in the deportation of children from Ukrainian territories temporarily occupied by Russian troops.

In turn, the advisor to the Mariupol mayor, Petro Andriushchenko, said that Russia abducts Ukrainian children from the temporarily occupied territories through the humanitarian mission Children in Hands, founded by Lvova-Belova.

The Russian authorities are compiling new lists of Ukrainian children from the temporarily occupied territories who are to be taken to Russia via Belarus.

On December 28, self-proclaimed Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko personally attended a government-organized meeting with illegally deported children.

On January 25, PACE called on EU parliaments to recognize the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia as a war crime.

As of March 18, 2024, more than 19,546 Ukrainian children have been illegally deported to the Russian Federation.