Full Title: Lithuania parliament urges criminal prosecution of Russian leadership
VILNIUS (Reuters) - The Lithuanian parliament on
Thursday called for the criminal prosecution of
Russia's leadership for its invasion of Ukraine and
what it said is the wide-scale forced deportation of
Ukrainians to Russian territory.
At least a million Ukrainians were deported to Russia
and Russian-controlled territories, including 200,000
children, the parliament said in a motion that was
passed unanimously.
Moscow calls its nearly three-month-old invasion a
"special military operation" to rid Ukraine of fascists,
an assertion Kyiv and its Western allies say is a
baseless pretext for an unprovoked war.
"Justice will only be achieved through the prosecution
of Russian leaders, other high-ranking organizers of
the crimes, and direct perpetrators of the hostilities
and the civilian deportations in Ukraine", the motion
said.
The motion does not name a specific authority that
should carry out the prosecution, but calls on "other
countries" to make use of the principle of universal
jurisdiction that allows countries to try accused war
criminals from other nations.
Prosecutors investigating war crimes cases in Ukraine
are examining allegations of the forcible deportation of
children to Russia since the invasion as they seek to
build a genocide indictment, Ukraine's top prosecutor
said on June 3.
Russia's TASS state news agency on May 30 quoted
an unnamed law enforcement official as saying that
"more than 1.55 million people who arrived from the
territory of Ukraine and Donbas have crossed the
border with the Russian Federation. Among them,
more than 254,000 children."
The parliaments of Lithuania and the other Baltic
countries of Latvia and Estonia have passed motions
labelling Russian actions in Ukraine a "genocide", with
Lithuania adding that its actions also constitute
"terrorism".
The Lithuanian motion was passed on the anniversary
of the start of a programme of mass deportations of
Lithuanians to Siberia in 1940 after the country was
forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union.
About 130,000 people were exiled during the next
decade and a half, the parliament said.