Russian troops expelled tens of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia using brute force. Moscow says it's a voluntary evacuation. And Kyiv insists that we are talking about mass deportations.

German experts explained to Focus why the Ukrainian side is right, while the Russian side is brazenly lying. For weeks now, there have been reports that war criminal Vladimir Putin is forcibly taking tens of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia and sending them to special camps.. Russian troops establish safe corridors only in the direction of the Russian Federation, so that people in the combat zone can only escape from the bombing and shelling to the neighboring country. Now the US Department of Defense has confirmed that all this is actually happening..

“We have evidence that Ukrainians are being taken to Russia against their will,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, adding that it is not yet known how many Russian camps for Ukrainians exist and what conditions are there..

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Focus also recalls that Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Lyudmila Denisova complained that more than 1.2 million Ukrainians, of whom 200,000 are children, have been forcibly deported to Russia since the start of the war.. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation insists that this is a voluntary evacuation. But Jan Klaas Behrends, professor of Eastern European history at the Leibniz Center in Potsdam, insists that the Russian interpretation of these events is nonsense.. The expert insists that there is a lot of evidence that it is the deportation of Ukrainians that is happening. Berends also explained why Putin needs these forced deportations.

“Putin is trying to destroy the culture and identity of Ukrainians. The behavior of his soldiers, including the killing of civilians and deportations, fits into the concept of genocide,” said the German professor.

By mass kidnapping people in the occupied territories, the Russian autocrat is repeating a terrible story.

“He repeats the practice of Stalin, who also gave orders for the mass deportation of foreigners,” Berends recalled..

Political scientist Andreas Heinemann-Gruder of the International Center for Conflict Research in Bonn also sees a clear parallel between the behavior of Stalin and Putin when it comes to deportation..

“Stalin paranoidly saw in everyone a Nazi collaborator. And now this paranoia has returned again, ”he explained, recalling the so-called filtration centers where Ukrainians are now being sent..

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People in the temporarily occupied territories are systematically searched in these centers. They are humiliated and interrogated, their phones and biographies are checked in search of the so-called Ukrainian Nazis, who were invented by Moscow..

“Depending on the classification, Ukrainians are given different permissions, which determine the regions for their later life,” said Professor Heinemann-Gruder.

Those who did not pass the FSB check simply disappear and no one knows where. Other Ukrainians are deliberately deported to far uninhabited regions of Russia, where they are left to fend for themselves.. The German expert also reminds that the Russian military creates safe routes leading only to the Russian Federation, thus leaving no choice for those who want to escape shelling and bombing.. According to him, this also falls under the classification of deportation..

All this reminds of the times of the Stalinist USSR. Deportations were common in the 1930s-1950s. Through cruel methods, Stalin tried to increase his power by destroying his political rivals.. Stalin also saw deportation as a way to quell any manifestations of dissatisfaction with his totalitarian regime.. Given this history, Putin's brutal actions are not surprising..

His strategy has already been evident in Crimea and the occupied part of Donbas since 2014. People who refused to accept the occupation regime were ruthlessly persecuted. For example, Crimean Tatars were killed and massively evicted from Crimea. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently sharply criticized the actions of Putin and his troops.

“Among other things, they deport children, hoping that they will forget where they come from and where their home is,” Zelensky said..