About 500,000 Ukrainians were taken away by Russia “against their will”, says Zelensky
Ukrainian President says half a million Ukrainians have been “illegally taken to Russia, or other places, against their will”. Speaking on Greek state television ERT, the head of state said civilians still trapped in the Azovstal factory in Mariupol were afraid to board the buses as they thought they would be taken to Russia.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres assured him that the evacuees would be taken to an area controlled by the Ukrainian government. “We want to believe it”a dit Volodymyr Zelensky.
These accusations of deporting Ukrainians to Russia have been recurrent since the start of the conflict, but are difficult to verify. Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boitchenko said in late March that “the occupiers forced[ai]people already exhausted by the war to get on buses”also stating that “the Russian occupier confiscated[ait] people’s passports and other Ukrainian identity documents. »
Le Washington Postthe BBC and the Guardian also mentioned these population displacements: a woman evacuated from Mariupol told the Washington Post that she had gone through a « camp de filtration », like those established in Chechnya, where civilians were photographed, questioned and had to hand over their telephones, whose contacts were recorded. She was then taken to Russia, interrogated again by the Russian intelligence services (FSB), before being taken to Taganrog, on the shores of the Sea of Azov, about sixty kilometers from Rostov. She was then to be sent to Vladimir, east of Moscow, but managed to flee with her family.
The United States Embassy in Ukraine has accused Russia of having abducted more than 2,000 children.