Since the beginning of the full-size war, Russia has continued to deport Ukrainians with fresh force. According to the information provided by Dmytra Lubinec, the Human Rights Ombudsman in Ukraine, since the beginning of February 2022 at least 2.8 million Ukrainians have been forced to leave or deported to Russia. There are besides known cases of forced exports of Ukrainians to Belarus.
For as many Ukrainians as possible to be outside their country, Russian invaders in temporarily occupied territories do not take measures: they deprive parents of their rights, change adoption rules or make "inclusive camps" for teenagers. Russia one more time resorts to kidnapping and deportation, desiring to destruct Ukrainians as a nation.
Deportation methods and tools Filter camps play an crucial function in most deportations. According to a study from researchers from Yale University, Russia has created 21 specified "institutions" since March last year only on the territory of the Donetsk Oblast.
The process that Russia calls filtering means, in fact, the kind of verification during which biometric data, individual items and telephone content are collected, as well as political views being questioned. Ukrainians who have experienced this kind of camp talk about terrible conditions: from a fewer hours to almost a period they stayed in overflowing rooms, poorly or at all unheated, without access to water, food and basic infrastructure (for example shower cabins). In addition to intellectual pressures, physical force has besides frequently been utilized during “verification”.
There have been reports of Russian detention and deportation of their children for an indefinite period. It besides happened that children remained alone during the fighting, erstwhile the border was closed, and relatives or acquaintances were simply in another towns.
In the occupied territories, Ukrainian families were frequently intentionally placed by the FR in a hard material situation to deprive guardians of parental rights. For example, in February 2022 Ukrainian men began to be forcibly mobilized in Donecczyń. specified an approach helped to accomplish 2 objectives: the image of war was distorted and the Ukrainians were blamed for it, and fresh personnel were provided for armed action – since the FR considers the people in the occupied territories to be "its own", that is, they should defend their "own" homeland. That's how the Russians went, not the Ukrainians.
The mobilisation of "its" besides had another negative effects, frequently little noticeable. For financial reasons, wives of Ukrainian men were forced to go to work abroad. Children were then taken care of by their grandparents or friends. As early as April 2022, the Donecczyń was launched with the following scenario: they first collected information about the family, in which they felt that the social and economical conditions were insufficient, and then transmitted this data to the occupying courts with an endorsement that parents had to be deprived of parental rights. Following the decision of specified a court, the kid was placed in a social institution and from there was forced to be exported to the FR.
Children's deportation is facilitated by a simplified adoption process: since March 2022 a number of provisions have been formulated in Russia for the passportisation of orphaned children from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. In the alleged household support centres, fresh parents are sought for the deported children, and ideological education courses are organised for possible candidates.
The Russian Orthodox Church (RCP) besides helps in the deportations of Ukrainians, which, due to its reputation, has not been considered sacred in Ukraine for a long time. The Ministry of Extraordinary Situations of the FR communicates to the employees of the Church information about forced removals, and they centralizedally settle them in their centres. Moreover, in RCP Ukrainians undergo a second cycle of filtration – this time "spiritual", in the form of meetings and utilizing Russian propaganda.
Hidden deportation
Shortly before the full-scale invasion, Russian military began deportation of orphaned children from the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Lugansk. On 18 February human rights defenders began to evidence cases of forced removal of children to Russia under the pretext of evacuation – that is, cases of latent deportation of Ukrainians.
This could besides be observed shortly before the liberation of Kherson and the surrounding areas on the right bank of Dnieper. The Chersonian writer Oleh Baturin in October 2022 spoke (link is external) about how Ukrainians were transported to temporarily occupied Crimea and to Krasnodarsk Country in FR. The Russians claimed that for a time they put people in sanatoriums and leisure facilities. At the same time, different information was published in the business channels on the Telegram: everyone who left was proposed to stay in the Krasnodarski Country permanently.
Under the pretext of going to vacation camps, orphaned children and semi-orphans were deported from Ukraine from the temporarily occupied areas of Donetsk (although this was frequently the case for children with both parents). The organizers of 1 of the programs (link is external) of the forced export of orphans were the Russians Dmytro Hracew and Dmytro Szmelov, who call themselves the "health minister" and the "revenue and toll minister" of DNR. As determined by the safety Service of Ukraine, they belong to the immediate vicinity of the warlords of the Donetsk militants Denys Puszylina and were appointed to the occupying authorities by his protection in July 2022.
Similar certificates of deportation under cover of rest, treatment, or discipline come from another temporarily occupied cities and villages of Ukraine. For example, in Lisichansk, invaders carried their children to FR on the pretext that no Ukrainian teachers were to be left in the city and education could not be interrupted. Therefore, it was decided to “save” tiny Ukrainians somewhere in FR territory. Parents were forbidden to leave with their children.
The mayor of Enerhodar informed that in October 2022 any parents from the town and surrounding villages sent their children to Krasnodar Country in FR. The Russian occupiers then put the Ukrainians before the fact made: their children “are staying on vacation in Russia for an indefinite period” and will go to school there. They besides ordered them to give them warm things.
An iNews British edition investigation conducted in March 2022 revealed in Russia 66 camps for forced deportation Ukrainians. They are located in 11 time zones – from Belgorod in the west through Ural to the far peninsula of Kamchatka and the town of Vladivostok in the east. The camp rooms usage sanatoriums, centres of "patriotic upbringing", areas of erstwhile children's recreation camps, and even chemical weapons storage.
The Russians besides organize “inclusive camps” for Ukrainian teenagers. They claim that in this way they "help them to deal with the trauma of war" and "social adaptation", but in fact it is forced assimilation by instilling Russian history, language and culture. For example, the Russian foundation “New Teacher” and its program “Uniquely Different”. On the website of the task in social networks, 1 can read that in the camps of the Ukrainian program children are taken care of by Russian teachers and psychologists. There is, of course, no mention on the main page of the deported or at least the "evacuated" Ukrainian children. It only lists "children with experience of migration" or "children of migrants".
ASYMINATION
The process of the community's acceptance and similarity of culture and customs of another community.
In this way, his manager Iryna Bełoucowa writes about the operation of the “Uniquely Different” programme:
“Children screamed, sometimes cried, and teachers couldn’t handle them. They pressed them, and they [opposed] even more and came out of the scandal. It was hard for local parents too. They were tense and scared, which was what they did to their children. After a period there were many unspoken misunderstandings."
According to Onysia Synjuk, the legal analyst of the Human Rights Centre of ZMINA, the ideological reeducation of Ukrainian children further increases the burden of deportation crimes and bears the marks of genocide: ‘The main presumption of evacuation, in peculiar children, is that it is organised solely for their safety, under peculiar circumstances. There is only 1 basis for it: legitimate reasons for wellness or treatment."
Witness Stories
In time, more stories come out. And nevertheless painful they are, each must be documented – in order to safe evidence of the FR war crimes and to be reconsidered as shortly as possible.
For example, a Rubiżne village resident in Donecczyń told the website slidstvo.info about the auditions she had experienced as part of the filtering activities in the FR territory: “The most terrible and most unpleasant were the conversations with officers of the Russian Ministry of Extraordinary Situations. They poured slop on Ukraine and our president. They have photographed all our documents."
Also, Waleria, whose household was deported to Russia from Rubižne, recalls during a individual interview: “They interrogated them at all stage. They questioned not only my mom, but the kids. They put quite a few force on their psyche. They asked what their attitude was to Ukraine, to Ukrainian, whether they liked Russian, why they were going to Estonia...’.
London correspondent “The fresh York Times” Emma Bubola has been following the destiny of Ukrainian children in Russia for respective months. any of them mentioned in their statements that they were driven by force or trickery and promised a comfortable life in fresh families in Russia. "I didn't want to go. But nobody asked my opinion," said 14-year-old Ania, who escaped from a tuberculosis facility in Mariupolu and was in a foster home close Moscow at the time of her interview with a journalist. Coming from Mariupola, a 12-year-old Sashko during the planet economical Forum in Davos told what he experienced in the filter camp. In addition to the trauma associated with the gathering with the occupiers in March, he was separated from his parent without even letting him say goodbye. He was told that he would go to a child's home and then – for adoption. Mom hasn't seen him since.
In the filter camp, the Russians told the boy that he was not needed by his mother, and she would not come to him due to the fact that she was in captivity: “I told her that I had a grandmother, that she was in Ukraine, that I wanted her. They wouldn't. They took me to a regional trauma ward in Donetsk and treated my eye there. I had my grandmother's number, and I asked my friend in the infirmary area for a telephone call, and on Vibera, I connected to my grandmother. I told her where I was. She began collecting papers to take me.” Now Sashka is being cared for by his grandmother, but his mother's whereabouts and destiny stay unknown.
Testimony on Ukrainians deported to Belarus is less, as its territory is treated as a temporary "sorting point" from where people are yet exported to Russia.
Military scientist Natalia Zarecka, who works with people with the experience of deportation to Belarus, tells in 1 interview that people sometimes say: “the most crucial thing is that we are alive” due to the fact that they are not acquainted with the standards of global humanitarian law and cannot identify its violations themselves. Of course, this attitude can besides be caused by the defence mechanisms of the psyche – the victims want to forget about the nightmare as shortly as possible and return to the average life they had lived before.
“The man who was released from captivity understands that others had all the power over him, but it did not become the worst—and he may even feel gratitude for being taken out and released, and not killed. It is natural under specified conditions," adds Natalia Zarecka.
Similar stories of the deported Ukrainians are documented by the PR Army social organization as part of the "Where Our People?" information campaign. It besides provides informative publications on the fact that akin cases are nothing fresh in Ukrainian history, as deportations took place already in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. All the materials on the site are in English, so spreading them will aid not only increase the level of cognition of foreigners about the effects of the ongoing full-sized war, but besides overthrow myths about large Russia and its supposed-democratic values
Fight for Deportees
Every man's life is the highest value. specified a evidence is found in the Constitution of Ukraine (Article 3), and this is the case with thousands of Ukrainians all day, especially during a full-scale war. While Russian troops abandon their wounded in the battlefield, like cannon meat, Ukrainians do not halt fighting for anyone who has been taken prisoner or deported. They do it at both national and local levels.
Since there is no full information about the exact number of people deported or their whereabouts, the work of human rights organisations is multidimensional.
The first dimension – behind the words of Alexander Matwijczuk, head of the Centre for civilian Liberties (CWO), who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – is the dissemination of information. To this end, a squad of organisations prepared instructions on how to act step by step in the event of deportation.
The second dimension is applicable help. The global organization “Helping to Leave, registered in the Czech Republic, supports deported Ukrainians from Russia on papers and logistics issues (ticket purchase, way fixing). You can besides mention to the “I support Ukraine” organization founded by the Mariupola refugees. Their recommendations for departure can be found in the instructions. The 3rd dimension is uncovering solutions in peculiarly complex, individual cases. As an example, Alexander Matwijczuk cites the communicative of the deported couple: a man and a female in advanced pregnancy without Ukrainian passports or another documents. First, a wife was removed from Russia so that she could have a birth outside the country – a terrorist organization and that the kid was not given compulsory Russian citizenship. They then sought the anticipation of handing over papers to a man from Ukraine to be besides taken out of the FR.
When deported Ukrainians come from Russia to European countries, they can benefit from their exile programs. Support has been organised in each country and can be requested. According to Alexander Matwijczuk, it is hard to bring in deported children who, for various reasons, are in FR without parents. frequently human rights defenders know about the transport of young Ukrainians, but cannot identify them. The Russians do not supply any information or let contact with children. It is so essential to mobilise public and non-governmental bodies, as well as global organisations defending children's rights.
