The United States said Russian forces had sent thousands of Ukrainians to so-called “Russia filtering centers”.
“These sites allegedly sent tens of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia or some Russian-controlled territory,” said US Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Michael Carpenter.
The forced displacement and reported violence faced by those in so-called filtering centers amount to war crimes, Carpenter said in his remarks to the OSCE Permanent Council.
“Several eyewitness accounts indicate that ‘filtering’ involves beating and torturing individuals to determine whether they owe the least allegiance to the Ukrainian state,” Carpenter said Thursday.
To contextualize: an investigation of the CNN in April it revealed that Russian forces and allied separatist soldiers were taking residents of Mariupol to a so-called “filtering center” set up in Bezimenne, where they were registered before being sent to Russia, many against their will.
The Ukrainian government and local authorities in Mariupol say tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens have been forcibly deported to the Donetsk People’s Republic and Russia since the start of the war.
“Survivors of this process describe a coercive, multi-destination journey through various ‘filtering’ points in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine and eventually across the border into Russia itself,” Carpenter noted.
“Those who have survived describe these centers as makeshift camps made up of military tents or civilian infrastructure such as schools or sports centers. Satellite images show these camps at various locations in southeastern Ukraine.”
The US Mission to the OSCE declined to discuss the sources of the information, but said it was confident in the assessment and scale of the reported numbers.
According to Carpenter, victims described an “invasive and humiliating” inspection process at these centers.
“Russian soldiers photograph victims from various angles, collect fingerprints and physically examine them for tattoos, inspect their cell phones and download their contacts and data into devices, and record their biographical information in various databases… In some cases, Russian soldiers confiscated passports, identification documents and cell phones,” said Carpenter.
“Once in Russia, survivors report that some Ukrainian citizens are allowed to stay with friends and family who live in Russia, but that people without money or documents are put on trains destined for cities hundreds of kilometers away to receive jobs. of the Russian authorities”. he added.
Source: CNN Brasil
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