“On March 15, Russian troops stormed our bomb shelter and ordered all women and children to leave. “It was not an option,” said a woman who had been hiding with her family in a suburb of Mariupol since early March. “People need to know the truth, that the Ukrainians are being transferred to Russia, the country that owns us.” Ukrainian officials have accused Russian troops of transporting several thousand Mariupol residents through “filtering camps” and forcibly transporting them to Russia through Russian-controlled democracies in eastern Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov denied the allegations, saying “such reports are false.” Russian officials have previously said that 420,000 people have been voluntarily evacuated to Russia “from dangerous areas of Ukraine and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.” The women asked to remain anonymous because they were worried about the safety of their relatives who are still in the heavily bombed city. Their accounts, along with similar stories published by the Washington Post and the BBC and reports by human rights groups, contradict Russian claims that Ukrainians are not being forcibly transferred to Russia. The southern port of Mariupol came under heavy fire from Russian forces shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, with many families seeking refuge in bomb shelters. Since then, Russian troops have taken control of large parts of the devastated city. After leaving her shelter, the first woman said she was taken by bus with “two hundred or three hundred” others to the border town of Novoazovsk, in Russian-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine. “Once we got to a stop, we had to wait for hours in the bus until we were ordered to go through a large group of tents, in what everyone called ‘filtering camps.’ A satellite image taken by US-based Maxar Technologies last week showed tent camps set up in the Russian-controlled village of Bezimenne near Novoazovsk. Representatives of the two self-proclaimed democracies in Donbas said they had set up a “tent city with 30 tents” for Mariupol residents with a capacity of up to 450 people. Satellite scene image in the village of Bezimenne near Mariupol. Photo: Maxar A report in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a Russian government-owned newspaper, said 5,000 Ukrainians had been treated at the Bezimenne camp and screened to prevent “Ukrainian nationalists from infiltrating Russia in disguise as refugees.” The woman described how she was photographed and had her fingerprints taken as soon as she entered the camp. He was then “extensively interrogated” by men posing as members of Russia’s FSB security service. “They passed by my phone. “They asked me if I knew anything about the Ukrainian army, if I had friends in the army,” he said. “I was also asked what I thought about Ukraine, Putin and the conflict. It was very humiliating. “ After passing through the “filter camp”, which lasted a few hours, according to the woman, the group was finally transferred to Rostov, a city 80 miles (130 km) east of the Ukrainian border. Just there, the team was informed that their final destination would be Vladimir, a city just over 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Moscow. But in Rostov, the woman decided to separate from the main group, telling the Russian guards that she had a family living there. “They let me go without much trouble. “But for many, leaving was simply not an option.” The woman recalls that many on the bus complained that they were only given a few minutes to pack up and often had no money or official papers, making it difficult for them to leave Russia afterwards. After separating from the group, the woman took her way first to Moscow by bus and then took the train to St. Petersburg. He said he was now safe after crossing the border in an EU country on foot. The extent of the reported deportations from Russia remains unclear. The Helping to Leave Fund, a Russian team meeting the needs of people who have relocated to Russia from Ukraine, said it had received about 200 requests from deported Ukrainians for help. “Each of these requests usually comes from an entire family, so the actual number of people deported is higher,” said Maria Ivanova, a spokeswoman for the group. Ivanova said the group had seen an increase in requests for help since March 28 and had heard first-hand reports of “long queues” in “filter camps”. The reported deportations have caused concern in international human rights organizations. “These people were not given the option to evacuate to a safer place in Ukraine. “Many found themselves in a situation where their only choice was to go to Russia or die as the bombing intensified,” said Tatyana Lokshina, deputy director of the European Center for Human Rights in Europe and Central Asia. “According to international human rights law, forced eviction or transportation does not necessarily mean that people were forced into a vehicle at gunpoint, but rather that they found themselves in a situation where they had no choice.” Loxina referred to the Geneva Convention, which “prohibits the solitary confinement of individual or mass deportees, as well as the expulsion of protected persons from the Occupied Territories, regardless of their motives.” A second woman the Guardian spoke to gave a similar description of her forced transfer from Mariupol via a “filter camp” in Novoazovsk. “I never asked to be taken away. “The filter camps, the trip, were very traumatic,” said the woman, who left the city on a Russian bus on March 16. She is currently in Rostov planning her trip abroad. Russian officials have spoken openly about their efforts to relocate what they call “Ukrainians temporarily displaced.” The Russian Ministry of Defense has published almost daily its efforts to evacuate the Ukrainian civilians who are “trapped” in Mariupol. Vladimir’s governor told local media that his city had received more than 1,000 “refugees” from territories “liberated” from Russia, including Mariupol. Not everyone who was transferred from Ukraine to Russia said they were unhappy that they did. “I wanted to go to Russia. I’m glad I’m safe. “And my family lives here, so I was looking for a way to get here,” said Vladimirira, a third woman from Mariupol who spoke to the Guardian, who has since moved with family to Rostov. Mariupol is only 37 miles from the Russian border and many of its inhabitants have relatives on the other side. While the invasion has dramatically reduced pro-Russian sentiment in the city, Vladimir said she welcomes the security she felt the move provided to Russia. She also confirmed that she had been through “filtering camps”, but said she was not bothered as she was “glad she was safe”. “There is definitely a group of people who have moved from Mariupol and they will not mind being in Russia. “Who will stay there,” said Ivanova of the Helping to Leave Fund. “But we know of hundreds who moved against their will. That fact must be taken into account. “
