Ukraine’s top prosecutor is considering launching criminal proceedings against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, according to a letter made public on Tuesday. 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.

Background

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 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.

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. Zelenskiy’s office and the prosecutor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.

Implications

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.

Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.