Against the backdrop of constant missile attacks by Putin’s army and front-line reports, the sad fact that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians right now are passing through a humiliating and extremely dangerous filtration system often recedes into the background.. The “special operation” of Russia began with the words of the Kremlin leader about “taking the Ukrainian people hostage by a gang of drug addicts and Nazis”. But it predictably turned into a persecution of Ukrainian citizens who ended up in the territory occupied by the occupier..
When, before the invasion, on February 22, Western intelligence warned about the plans of the Russians to create filtration camps, for many, these signals seemed to exaggerate. However, the reality turned out to be worse than the warnings..
How and where does it happen?
Virtually all residents of the temporarily occupied territories were forced to undergo a meticulous check by the Russian law enforcement agencies and collaborators. Despite the blatant violation of international law, the Russians, without hiding at all, deployed a multi-level filtering system for Ukrainian citizens at checkpoints, border points, filtration camps, prisons and places of residence, in the occupied territories and in Russia itself..
The process of “screening” people is accompanied by interrogations, beatings, stripping, bullying, kidnapping and disappearance of people. And murders. Former ATO participants and pensioners, children and activists, patriots and people who still retain reverence for Russia - they all became objects of verification. No one in the Temporarily Occupied Territories (TOT) could escape the captious attention. Even citizens who have no connections with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the defense industry become the target of the occupier. It has already been officially recognized at the level of international organizations that the Russians are looking for not only people associated with the military sphere. They catch everyone who in their country considered himself its citizen and patriot. I put on an embroidered shirt to a child at school - welcome to hell.
Indiscriminate “denazification” by the Russian Federation is usually subject to residents of Russian-speaking cities. The last fact does not matter to us, since Ukraine has long known the real motives of Russia's crimes.. But to the drugged Russian society, this circumstance, theoretically, should have a lot to say about Putin's policy.. In the meantime, as we see, it continues to be content with poison about “Ukrainian Nazis”.
Citizens who are trying to break into the territory controlled by Ukraine are subject to especially cruel filtering.. For many of our compatriots, the hometowns seized by the invaders have become a real trap.. As the adviser to the mayor of Mariupol Petr Andryushchenko notes, the filtration in the city was the most severe, when there was still an opportunity to evacuate to a free part of Ukraine.
Stating in her appeal to the UN Human Rights Council the impossibility of freely entering and leaving Mariupol, UN High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet named the main manifestations of “denazification” in the process of filtering. It is accompanied by arbitrary decisions, intimidation and humiliation that can amount to abuse.. Cases of separation of families and violation of privacy are recorded. High Commissioner alarmed at risk of detention and ill-treatment of those who do not pass the filter. “The men disappeared after they were sent to filtration camps” – these dry facts, mentioned in one of the UN comments, are the tragedies of Ukrainian families and unforgivable crimes.
In a large " Unfortunately, the Putin regime is purposefully targeting Ukrainian children.. In addition to the “passportization” and the removal of children to Russia, the abduction of orphans and the forced teaching of the Russian language in “educational” camps, children were taken away from their detained parents or settled together with adults in terrible filtration camps.
Donetsk and Lugansk lands dotted with filtration camps are in the center of public attention, but the occupier uses similar practices in Zaporozhye, Kharkiv and Kherson regions. Everywhere people are filtered and fingerprinted. By forbidding travel to the territory controlled by Ukraine, the occupiers are forcing citizens to flee the war zone to Russia. In fact, people are threatened with filtration before leaving the dangerous territory, deportation to Russia and the prospect of becoming a target of the FSB already on the territory of the aggressor state. Deportation by filtering drives.
“The most terrible problem is the disappearance of people while crossing the border” - this phrase of the local human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina caused a resonance even in the Russian media. “This is all justified, if you need to undress, they will,” this is how an FSB representative reacted to a report about bullying Ukrainians. They always make sense. "
As it should be for the occupier, he issues ausweisses to the victims of filtration to move around the camps, the occupied territories or to travel outside the occupied communities.. For those who could not pass the check of the FSB and the occupation administration, special prisons have been prepared. According to the estimates of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Irina Venediktova, only in the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk regions there are 200 permanent and temporary places of illegal detention of captured military personnel and civilians, including journalists and volunteers. In these prisons, where anyone " The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has data on the detention of people who have not been filtered in Olenivka and Donetsk, in particular in the terrible Izolyatsia prison. The number of citizens who did not survive the Russian check is not exactly known and, unfortunately, it will hardly ever be possible to establish it..
Why filtering is needed?
Building an extensive, multi-level and massive system of filtering the civilian population makes one wonder why Russia needs it. Before the full-scale invasion in February 2022, the occupier used filtering in certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, but it was not so large-scale. Then the citizens had the opportunity to move relatively safely between the WTO and the free territory of Ukraine. Now there is no such possibility..
Why the occupier intensified its repressive practices? On the one hand, the answer is obvious. At the expense of civilians, Russia planned and plans to increase the " The practice of " Stanislav Miroshnichenko, a journalist with the Media Initiative for Human Rights and a researcher of Russian filtering, notes that for Russians it doesn’t matter if they face a civilian or a military one.. They call everyone military precisely in order to include them in the exchange fund.. There were cases when they grabbed civilians, dressed in military uniforms and imitated their belonging to military formations.
The invasion of the territory of the regions that Russia planned to “defend” since 2014 showed that the occupier himself is afraid of the need to defend himself from the “liberated” population. As soon as the invaders entered, for example, the Kharkiv region, they immediately announced the introduction of filtration measures and directly announced their goal: to prevent the locals from helping the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The occupation regimes in the newly captured Ukrainian territories stand on feet of clay, propped up by the barbaric screening of all potential threats.. In order to become a challenge for marginal occupation regimes, one does not need to be a partisan or transfer data to Ukrainian authorities. As evidenced by the periodic tantrums of local collaborators, the regime becomes nervous when people simply refuse to teach their children according to Russian programs or continue to work for legitimate, and not fictitious utility companies.. The lack of support for the invasion from the local population and the catastrophic shortage of personnel for the occupying administrations is compensated by a repressive filtering system and the creation of an atmosphere of total fear. In addition to identifying "
With the help of filtering and a ban on traveling freely to the territories controlled by Ukraine, the Russians are trying to immediately break all ties between Ukrainian fellow citizens.. What the occupiers in ORDLO came to over the years, the Russian aggressor realized in a matter of weeks. The targeting of civilians and the haste to build walls between the free and occupied territories indicate the weakness of the Russian position. However, unfortunately, it doesn’t make people feel better from ascertaining the uncertainty and complexes of the aggressor. It is through them that the skating rink of repressions, intimidation and humiliating checks with all the worst consequences takes place..
Filtration camps and measures also have a commercial dimension. The introduction of a total check of the citizens of Ukraine has become a stable source of income and profit for the occupation administrations and military units of the aggressor. The world-famous interest of the aggressor in washing machines also manifested itself during the filtration measures.. Knocking money out of citizens for passing the test has become as commonplace as beating or undressing. In Rubizhne, Luhansk region, for example, it was possible to pay off sadists for $100. But, as the locals say, the opportunity to negotiate on a monetary basis was a saving straw for many. The already mentioned Petr Andryushchenko believes that people need to look for contacts that help to pass the filter painlessly. “Now there are already ways to pass it very safely, which is not a big secret in the cities where this is done.. Therefore, it is necessary to look for this source and go in this way, ”adviser of the Mariupol mayor recommends to civilians.
Putinists would not be Putinists if they did not use their own crimes for propaganda. Having passed millions of Ukrainian citizens through terrible filtration, they urge them not to go to free territories, referring to... threats of filtration. The experiment to create a new normal in the minds of people is aimed at making them give up and not dream of returning to a safe life.. The Russians are actively monitoring the statements of Ukrainian officials about security measures and falsely present them to the population as evidence that Ukraine is resorting to similar actions.. Cynical Russian disinformation of intimidated citizens requires information counteraction from the Ukrainian state.
What do Russians primarily expect from “filtering civilians”?
The " With a humiliating check of citizens, they introduce their ideology. The ideology of destroying the right to exist of all Ukrainian. The Ukrainian-hating approach is best evidenced by the words of those who went through the filtration itself..
They asked about the attitude to the Ukrainian language, how much you communicate in it, are you satisfied that people in the Donbass were forced to speak Ukrainian… They free us from Ukraine,” says Yulia Pustovit, a resident of Rubizhne. So, according to the plan of the Russian Nazis, one who refuses the country of his birth, his language, patriotic feelings and, in fact, his whole life can successfully pass the filtration.
In combination with humanitarian policy at WTO, Russia openly demonstrates the position: Ukrainians have no right to exist. " Especially if this goal is to deny the very concept of Ukrainian statehood in the areas that the Russian Federation now controls in order to more easily absorb these parts of Ukraine, ”US Ambassador to the OSCE Michael Carpenter aptly described Russian policy back in May.. This circumstance of the Russian "
Has the world noticed the tragedy of Ukrainian filtering
Yes and no. World media and politicians talk about the criminal practice of Russians, but the majority states the impossibility of influencing the situation. Crime has become commonplace.. There is a threat that they will be perceived as the inevitable consequences of the war. It is important to keep looking for ways to save people. International organizations should more insistently demand access to the occupied territories and expel the occupying state from solid international institutions, where, after all the crimes, it has no right to be.
“The OSCE must make a choice: let the Russian Federation destroy the organization or find a way to suspend its powers,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba recently addressed the annual OSCE security conference with these words.. Law enforcement agencies of Ukraine must demonstrate high standards for documenting and investigating crimes against citizens committed during the occupational " To do this, it is necessary to create a real system for collecting evidence from citizens both within the country and among Ukrainian refugees.. Officials should remove bureaucratic obstacles for the return of Ukrainians from Russia as soon as possible. The main thing is not to perceive crimes as commonplace..