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.