By Mark Trevelyan
LONDON, July 28 (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office has asked Ukraine’s top prosecutor to consider launching criminal proceedings against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, according to a letter made public on Tuesday.
Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, allowed Moscow to use Belarus as a launchpad for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Ukrainian president’s office said in the letter that it was responding to an appeal by an exiled opposition group, the Belarus Democratic Forum, which wrote to Zelenskiy in May asking Kyiv to prosecute Lukashenko for war crimes, genocide and “state terror”.
The Forum accused him of complicity in Russia’s war in Ukraine and in the forced transfer of at least 2,442 Ukrainian children to Belarus via a programme documented by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab.
Lukashenko’s administration did not respond to a request for comment. In 2023, he said Belarus had temporarily hosted some children from Ukraine to help them recover from trauma caused by the war.
On Tuesday, Oleh Tatarov, a senior official in Zelenskiy’s office, wrote to the Forum that the appeal had been forwarded to the prosecutor’s office with a request to “take the appropriate response measures” if there were legal grounds to do so. His letter was published by the Forum.
Zelenskiy’s office and the prosecutor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.
While there is no current prospect of Lukashenko appearing before a Ukrainian court, any charges against him could be used by Kyiv and the Belarusian opposition as an argument for the West to keep up pressure on him — even as he negotiates with the administration of President Donald Trump to get more U.S. sanctions lifted in return for freeing political prisoners.
ZELENSKIY TAKES HARDER LINE TOWARDS LUKASHENKO
Zelenskiy has taken a more assertive stance towards Lukashenko in recent weeks, including issuing him an ultimatum last month to remove signal relay stations that Kyiv said were helping Russian drones to hit Ukraine.
Lukashenko this month reiterated that he would not send his army to fight in the war, telling officers and military graduates: “Nobody is going to send you into this bloodbath.”
But he has supported Putin in other ways, including by allowing Moscow to place tactical nuclear missiles in Belarus and to use its military bases and training grounds.
Dmitry Bolkunets, secretary general of the Belarus Democratic Forum, said a prosecution of the president would “significantly increase the personal legal and security risks faced by Lukashenko” and would be an act of historical justice.
“It could have a profound impact inside Belarus, because Lukashenko would take it very personally and be deeply concerned about the consequences,” he told Reuters.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan in London; additional reporting by Kyiv buro, editing by Andrei Khalip)
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