After weeks under Putin’s bombs,these Ukrainians were given only one way out
Lviv, Ukraine — When Russian forces and allied separatist soldiers arrived offering a path to safety, it felt like a sick twist of fate.It was mid-March and residents in Mariupol had spent weeks in freezing, damp basements, hiding from relentless Russian bombardment and fearing for their lives. Now, they were being told that to survive, there was only one way out: to Russia.If they didn’t leave they would die in the rubble, the Russian soldiers warned. They said they had little choice.Russian President Vladimir Putin’s siege of Mariupol has come to epitomize his scorched-earth war in Ukraine. The assault from land, air and sea has leveled the southern port city to the ground, destroying or damaging 90% of its infrastructure, according to the mayor. A drama theater and an art school sheltering hundreds of women and children were obliterated. A maternity hospital was bombed.
More than 100,000 people remain trapped in Mariupol, living in dire and rapidly deteriorating conditions without water, food, heat or electricity. Because communication to the city has largely been cut off, it’s nearly impossible for residents to know when it might be safe to surface from bomb shelters, or how to catch evacuation buses out. Many attempts to set up evacuation corridors have collapsed due to continued attacks.Rather than allowing safe passage out of the city, Russian and separatist troops are taking tens of thousands of civilians to so-called “filtration centers” in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine, which Moscow recognizes as independent, before moving them to Russia, according to Ukraine’s government, humanitarian watchdogs, and US officials. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereschuk has estimated that some 45,000 Ukrainian citizens have been forcibly deported since the war began.The Mariupol City Council said in a statement that Russia’s failure to agree on evacuation corridors, and its creation of filtration centers, were part of a broader effort to cover up potential war crimes carried out in the city. “The occupiers try to identify all potential witnesses to the occupiers’ atrocities through filtration camps and destroy them,” the council said. CNN could not verify that claim.The practice has stirred painful memories of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s forced deportation of millions from their homelands, including more than 230,000 Crimean Tatars, to remote parts of the Soviet Union during World War II. Russian forces also used “filtration camps” during the war in Chechnya in the 1990s, where human rights groups documented extensive abuses, including torture, hostage-taking and extrajudicial killings.”I do not need to spell out what these so-called ‘filtration camps’ are reminiscent of. It’s chilling and we cannot look away,” US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said. She cited credible reports — including from Mariupol City Council — of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents confiscating passports and IDs, taking away cell phones, and separating Ukrainian families from one another.Few families in Mariupol have been left unscathed by Russia’s reign of terror. In a recent press conference, Mariupol’s mayor said that some of his neighbors and municipal colleagues were taken to Russia against their will. “A man with a weapon comes in at night and says it’s an evacuation. People who have been in the shelter for about 20 days get out, they’re put in the car and sent somewhere. In the morning, they saw that this was not Ukraine,” Vadym Boychenko said. “Then they were put on trains and they were already going to the hinterland of the Russian Federation.”Moscow has denounced the claims as lies, alleging that Ukraine has hindered its efforts to “evacuate” people to Russia. Russian Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev said that more than 550,000 people had been evacuated from “dangerous regions of Ukraine” to Russia since the war began, including more than 121,000 people from Mariupol, according to state-owned Russian news agency TASS.But a CNN investigation into deportations reveals a very different reality, one in which people were given only two options: Go to Russia or die. In interviews with 10 people, including local Mariupol residents and their loved ones, many describe Russian and DPR soldiers descending on bomb shelters and ordering those inside to leave immediately. None knew where they were being taken.Some said that after weeks of uncertainty they didn’t care where they ended up — that anywhere would be safer than Mariupol, in their view. Five were ultimately sent to Russia; three have since made it out.They have asked to be identified only by their first names, or by pseudonyms for their protection. All have shared evidence of their journey with CNN, including copies of the Russian migration cards they filled out and had stamped at the border. Those still in Russia, who are trying to find a way back home, are worried for their safety.