Nearly 50 children from Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine were taken to Belarus this week, according to Belarusian state media, with the help of a charitable foundation that has been accused of facilitating Russia’s forcible deportations of Ukrainian children.
Photos published by the Belarusian state news agency Belta on Monday showed the children arriving by train in Minsk, the capital, where they were met by police and volunteers wearing the colors of the Belarusian flag. Their arrival for what Belta extolled as a “vacation in peaceful and quiet Belarus” came just a day before President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine addressed the United Nations General Assembly, where he told world leaders that the systemic kidnapping and deportations of children from occupied areas of Ukraine amounted to genocide.
At least 19,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted and deported by Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and only 386 have been brought back, the Ukrainian first lady, Olena Zelenska, said on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday.
But thousands of Ukrainian children have also been taken to so-called health and recreation camps in Belarus, with funding from President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime, where they are subjected to cultural and ideological indoctrination, Belarusian opposition activists said earlier this year.
In June, the opposition activists submitted evidence to the International Criminal Court, in hopes that it would issue an arrest warrant for war crimes for Mr. Lukashenko, as it did for his close ally, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and for Maria Lvova-Belova, the Kremlin official who led Russia’s child deportation program.
Like Russia, Belarus has argued that its relocations of Ukrainian children are part of humanitarian operations. The Belarusian Red Cross faced international outrage this summer when its leader told state television that the organization was actively involved in transferring Ukrainian children to Belarus for “rehabilitation.”
The children who arrived in Minsk on Monday were brought to Belarus by the charitable foundation of Aleksei Talai, a Belarusian Paralympian who operates weekslong camps for children from the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and is closely aligned with Mr. Lukashenko, reported Belta, which said many of the children had lost their parents and did not provide any information on whether they were moved willingly or by force.
“The president, despite the external pressure, said to continue this important humanitarian project,” Mr. Talai told Belta. “We realize that these are our people, and we do not abandon our people.”
Mr. Talai’s foundation plays an integral role in the forcible transfers of Ukrainian children to Belarus, the Regional Center for Human Rights, a Ukrainian organization that investigates the abduction of children, said in a report published last month.
Katie LaRoque, a policy expert who specializes in the Europe and Eurasia region for the pro-democracy nonprofit Freedom House, called Belarus’s operation “state-driven” and said that its so-called recuperation camps are “brainwashing” vulnerable children to strip away their Ukrainian identity.
She added: “This is clearly brazen. They’re not trying to hide it.”
Milana Mazaeva contributed translation.
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