Six Belarusian and international civil society organisations have delivered substantial evidence to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court that could, ultimately, lead to arrest warrants for the country’s authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko.
The prosecutor, Karim Khan, launched a preliminary investigation into Belarus last September, after its neighbour, Lithuania, an ICC member state, referred it to the court – alleging crimes against humanity, including forced deportation and persecution of the regime’s opponents.
Lukashenko (70) has ruled the landlocked eastern European country, formerly part of the Soviet Union, since 1994, but the period under investigation focuses on the aftermath of mass political protests against his regime lasting almost a year from May 2020.
Lukashenko’s opponents, led by exiled opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, believe the evidence may allow the prosecutor to progress from a preliminary to a full ICC investigation – that could lead to international arrest warrants and finally to a trial.
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Lukashenko is a long-time ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, who is wanted by the ICC since March 2023 for war crimes, specifically the unlawful transfer and deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia, where many have been adopted by Russian families.
The cache of new Belarus evidence comes in the form of what’s known as “an Article 15 communication” that – under Article 15 of the Rome Statute, which established the ICC – allows any interested individual, group, state, intergovernmental or non-governmental organisation to securely hand over evidence on crimes under the jurisdiction of the court.
Belarus is not a member of the ICC. However, as a member, Lithuania may bring a case involving crimes that have been committed at least partly on its territory. Ukraine has also been an ICC member since January 1st, 2025.
According to the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the evidence draws on extensive interviews with witnesses and victims to show that the Belarus authorities created an atmosphere of “fear, terror and persecution” to “cleanse” the country of those the regime considered “disloyal” individuals.
It estimates that some 300,000 Belarusians have been forced to flee the country since 2020 – with one in 30 former residents of the country now living in exile.
More than 60,000 Belarusians are living permanently in Lithuania, though even there they face intimidation and threats in the form of judicial harassment, trials in absentia, seizure of property, and threats against relatives still at home, says FIDH.
The new evidence may also allow the ICC prosecutor to investigate Belarus’s possible complicity in the deportation of Ukrainian children.
According to the Belarusian service of Radio Free Europe, local eye witnesses said “hundreds of Ukrainian children” had been forcibly taken to Belarus since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“There they are being ‘re-educated’ to turn against their homeland,” it reported last October.
“Regardless of whether the children were ultimately taken to Russia or elsewhere, such actions may fall under the ICC’s jurisdiction if the abductions were partly carried out on Ukrainian territory,” an ICC spokesperson in The Hague confirmed.
In a direct challenge to his dominance, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya ran against Lukashenko in a presidential election in August 2020, but fled the country after he was declared the winner – a result that both the opposition and Western countries denounced as fraudulent.
“The vicious crimes committed by the Lukashenko regime, from forced deportations to illegal arrests, sexual violence and torture, cannot go unpunished,” she said. “Lithuania’s courage and the persistence of the ICC gives us hope.”
However – even assuming that the beleaguered ICC survives the sanctions of the Trump White House – the reality is that this legal battle will take years.
