Ukrainian refugees forcibly taken to Russia after the full-scale invasion of their home country on Feb. 24 have described a campaign of psychological terror reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps.
In an extensive investigation by the Associated Press published Wednesday, refugees recalled harrowing scenes from the filtration points Ukrainians are forced to go through by Russian authorities: strip searches, beatings, and in one case, an elderly woman literally freezing to death in a tent that reeked of corpses due to its proximity to a Mariupol mass grave.
With nearly 2 million Ukrainians forcibly deported to Russia, many of them were stripped of their identity documents and sent to remote areas of Russia where they have no family, no means of support, and little hope of ever returning home.
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Some of the refugees said they were literally tricked into making the journey, while others were made to believe it was their only chance of survival.
“This is some kind of incomprehensible lottery—who decides where and what,” Ivan Zavrazhnov, a Ukrainian who was taken to Russia before escaping to Estonia, told the AP.
“You understand that you are going, as it were, into the mouth of a bear... an aggressor state, and you end up on this territory.... I did not have the feeling that I was safe in Russia,” he said.
While Russia has framed the forced deportation as a humanitarian effort to rescue Ukrainian citizens from supposed Nazis, many refugees have said it was clear they were being used merely as pawns for such Kremlin propaganda, with some being forced to sign written testimonials accusing Ukrainian forces of war crimes.
Dmitriy Zadoyanov, a refugee from Mariupol, told the AP that after he was interrogated and his phone searched, an undisclosed Russian state television channel tried to scoop him up to get him to say negative things about Ukrainians. While he refused, he said he saw child refugees who were just arriving in Russia being greeted by people with cameras who asked them to talk about how Ukraine was killing its own citizens.
“It was 100 percent a tactical pressure. Why children? Because it is much easier to manipulate them,” he said.
Russian authorities also used such psychological games to keep Ukrainians from trying to return home, telling them they would be viewed as traitors for having been on enemy territory and sentenced to prison time.
Ukrainian authorities have warned that many of those forcibly taken to Russian territory are children who were either separated from their parents or orphaned by Russia’s war.
Disturbingly, Russia has boasted of its own efforts to adopt these children out to Russian families, with President Vladimir Putin promising in early June to find new “loving” families for Ukrainian orphans.
In addition to the Ukrainians who’ve been swept away to Russia, Ukrainian authorities say tens of thousands also remain in captivity at Russian filtration camps in occupied territories.
Vadym Boichenko, the mayor of Mariupol, said at a briefing Tuesday that more than 10,000 Ukrainian captives are being held at filtration camps in and around the port city.
He said nearly 2,000 Ukrainian men were being held at one center, a move he said was likely tied to Russian efforts to shore up more troops as part of a forced mobilization: “We understand why they are doing this. They have declared that some time in September they will give out these papers that they call Russian passports. And that is immediately a ticket to the front.”
