Belarusian hacktivist group known as “Cyber Partisans” said they have hacked the Belarusian branch of the Red Cross (BRC) organization and stolen internal documents showing the BRC’ s collaboration with the regime of self-proclaimed President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and the chapter’s involvement in the abduction of children from Ukraine.
Some of the published documents reference children from the city of Lysychansk in Ukraine's Luhansk region currently occupied by Russian forces who were moved without their parents to the city of Novopolotsk in Belarus in December 2022.
Despite the BRC’s claims that it is independent and autonomous from the Lukashenko regime, the organization regularly reports to the Council of Ministers (the Belarusian government) and the Ministry of Internal affairs, the documents show.
In July 2023, Dmitry Shevtsov, the chairman of the Belarusian Red Cross, was seen in camouflage with the letter Z (the letters Z and V were made by the Russian propaganda symbols of the Russian invasion of Ukraine) on it during the organization’s previous trip to the occupied Ukrainian territories. Though the Red Cross charter requires members of the organization to remain neutral.
The hacktivists said they handed over the stolen documents to the Ukrainian government for further proceedings.
