By Kontur and AFP | 2023-12-06

WASHINGTON -- The United States on Tuesday (December 5) unveiled sanctions against the director of the Belarus Red Cross, accusing him of being complicit in the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Russia is accused of forcibly deporting thousands of Ukrainian children -- with Belarus's support -- from schools, hospitals and orphanages in parts of the country controlled by its forces.

Ukraine has said some 20,000 children were taken to Russia in the wake of Moscow's invasion in February 2022. Fewer than 400 have been returned.

Moscow has not denied transferring thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia but claims it did so for their own protection.

The US Treasury Department said in a statement that the director of the Belarus Red Cross, Dzmitry Shautsou, had been sanctioned for assisting the Russian president's children's rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, who has been accused of enacting the deportations.

Lvova-Belova is the subject of a recent arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for "the war crime" of the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia.

Belarus Red Cross suspended

In July, Shautsou received fierce international criticism when he claimed that the Belarus Red Cross had been involved in bringing Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied areas of the country to Belarus.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies called on the Belarus Red Cross to sack Shautsou, and suspended the chapter as a member when it failed to do so.

Shautsou was among 11 entities and 8 individuals sanctioned by the US Treasury Department on Tuesday in a bid to ramp up the pressure on Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

The Treasury's actions reaffirm its efforts to hold Lukashenka, "his family and his regime accountable for their anti-democratic actions and human rights abuses, both in Belarus and around the world," the Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Brian Nelson, said in a statement.

6 Ukrainian children to return under Qatari deal

Meanwhile, six Ukrainian children taken by Russia in the wake of Moscow's invasion are to be reunited with family after Qatari mediation, officials from the Gulf state said Tuesday.

The children, aged between 8 and 15, are the second group of minors to be returned via Qatar's embassy in Moscow through a Doha-mediated deal between Russia and Ukraine that saw four returned in October.

Qatar had facilitated "the reunification of six additional Ukrainian children with their families in time for the festive holidays," said Minister of State for International Cooperation Lolwah al-Khater.

"Both sides cooperated fully and engaged in good faith throughout the process, with Qatar serving as an intermediary," she added.

Among the latest group is an 11-year-old boy whose mother, a Ukrainian soldier, is still being held in Russia. He has been handed into the custody of his aunt and is on his way to Ukraine via Moscow.

Another, an eight-year-old boy, had been with his grandmother in eastern Ukraine since March 2022, with Qatar negotiating a reunion with his mother in Russian-occupied Luhansk province before the pair traveled to Moscow.

All families have traveled together along the same route to Kyiv, via Moscow and Minsk, with Qatari diplomats accompanying the children to the Ukrainian border, where they will be received by Ukrainian authorities.

Al-Khater said the Qatari mediation had come "in response to requests from Russia and Ukraine to identify and explore potential areas of cooperation, with the aim of establishing foundations of trust between the two sides."

Qatar has been at the center of a series of high-profile negotiations and hostage exchanges in recent months, most notably mediating talks between Israel and Hamas for the release of scores of hostages and a seven-day ceasefire in Gaza that ended on December 1.