Dozens of Ukrainian kids from a Russian-occupied metropolis in Ukraine had been taken to Belarus and despatched to “emergency survival coaching” with the Belarusian army, in accordance with native media.
The Belarus 4 Mogilev state tv channel reported on Wednesday that 35 kids from town of Antratsyt in japanese Ukraine, which Russia has occupied since 2014, had been despatched to the japanese Belarusian metropolis of Mogilev, the place they had been taught “the way to behave in excessive conditions” in workout routines with the Belarusian army.
Within the report, the youngsters — a few of whom are carrying tracksuits with Russian flags printed on their sleeves — are proven holding on to one another and overlaying their faces throughout a hearth drill.
Hundreds of Ukrainian kids have been deported to Russia and Belarus from Russian-occupied elements of Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. In July 2023, Russian Youngsters’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova put the determine of Ukrainian kids “acquired” by Russia at 700,000, claiming most had been accompanied by their dad and mom or different family members.
A research by Yale College discovered that between September 2022 and Could 2023, over 2,400 Ukrainian kids aged 6 to 17 had been deported to Belarus from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia areas of Ukraine, that are occupied by Russian forces.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko met with a bunch of deported Ukrainian children final month, promising to “embrace these kids, deliver them to our residence, preserve them heat and make their childhood happier.”
In March 2023, the Worldwide Felony Courtroom (ICC) in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lvova-Belova, accusing them of overseeing the “illegal deportation” of Ukrainian kids. Moscow has rejected the allegations.
“We can’t enable kids to be handled as if they’re the spoils of struggle,” ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan stated in a press release.
In April, the Council of Europe described the “forcible switch and russification of Ukrainian kids” as “proof of a genocide.”