Lithuania's Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė has opened a pre-trial investigation into the alleged criminal transfer of Ukrainian children to Belarus, according to a statement issued on Monday.
The move comes in response to information handed over to the Lithuanian authorities by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a Belarusian opposition leader.
The accompanying documents indicate that more than 2,000 Ukrainian children, mostly orphans, have been illegally transferred from occupied Ukrainian territories to camps in Belarus. The transfers allegedly took place following orders by the Belarusian regime.
These crimes are punishable by prison terms of up to 15 years.
Speaking with reporters on Monday, Lithuanian Justice Vice Minister Gabija Grigaitė-Daugirdė welcomed the decision and hoped an arrest warrant would also be issued for Alexander Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus.
"This is yet another piece of evidence that Lukashenko has been involved in the aggression in Ukraine from the very beginning, and this is yet another episode which confirms that he should be subject to criminal responsibility and this is inevitable," she said.
"Since we have arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin, perhaps we will soon have an arrest warrant for Lukashenko for exactly the same kind of acts as, clearly, they are accomplices in this case," the vice minister added.
Lithuania's top prosecutor has also decided to separate the latest probe from the pre-trial investigation launched into potential war crimes in March 2022.
The latter investigation includes around 100 people who have been recognised as victims, and more than 360 refugees from Ukraine who have been interviewed as witnesses.
This pre-trial investigation is being carried out in close cooperation with the joint investigation team set up at the initiative of the Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office and coordinated by Eurojust, an EU agency based in the Netherlands dealing with judicial cooperation in criminal matters.
Thousands of children have been removed from Ukraine since the start of Russia's large-scale war against Ukraine in February last year.
The vast majority of them have been taken from Ukraine's occupied southern and eastern regions, with Kyiv estimating that more than 15,000 children have been deported to Russia.
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