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Belarus became an accomplice to Russian crimes and displaced at least 2219 Ukrainian children from the occupied territories to the territory of Belarus from 2021 to June 2024. Moreover, Aleksandr Lukashenko personally laid the groundwork for the displacement of Ukrainian children and the criminal policy of militarisation and eradication of Ukrainian identity. Human rights defenders called for the arrest of those responsible for these crimes.

This became known on October 10 during the presentation of the report “Stolen childhood: how the Belarusian regime is erasing Ukrainian children’s identity through displacement, re‑education, and militarization”.

The research was carried out by Human Rights Centre ZMINA, Regional Centre for Human Rights, human rights organisation Viasna and BelPol with the support of Freedom House. This report is the first to use data on the displaced Ukrainian children, which became known through contacts within Belarus. The researchers tracked the path of the displaced children and their fate after their displacement.

According to human rights defenders, Russia had been taking and changing the identity of Ukrainian children even before the start of the full-scale war, and after 2022, it began to do it even more actively. However, little was known about the role of Belarus in such a planned system. 

“We learnt that at least 2219 of our children were displaced to Belarus between 2021 and June 2024. And although these actions are justified as “recreation”, the largest groups of children are displaced to Belarus during the school year to facilitate their involvement in local schools. In addition, at least 27 children who were in camps in Belarus were later transferred to Russian camps”, comments Onys