These Ukrainian Citizens Were Removed From Their Homes And Interrogated By Russian Soldiers For Weeks

Vitalii Donchevskyi and his wife, Valentyna Churikova, were at home sharing a meal when Russian soldiers burst through the front door. They rounded up men and forced them to undergo a process known as filtering. It was the middle of April. The couple were sheltering in Ms Churikova’s parents’ home on the outskirts of the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol. one of the first places to become a battlefield after the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Mr Donchevskyi and Ms Churikova had heard that the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, which claims sovereignty over Ukraine’s Donetsk region, was working with Russian troops to search the city house by house. The soldiers wrote down the names of Mr. Donchevskyi and Ms. Churikova. Mr. Doczewski was then told to pack up. “I didn’t know what was coming next,” he said in a recent interview. “I heard that people were arrested for a day, or two days, 10 days at most, but no one knew.” Filtering, a process in which citizens not suspected of specific crimes are held in DPR or Russian facilities for days or weeks while authorities check their background and credentials, has become a reality for residents of Russian and under the control of Donetsk territories. in the months since the invasion began. In many cases, it is a necessary step before they are allowed to leave their communities or move freely within them. Ukrainians who do not arouse suspicion during filtering are detained for a short time before being issued with receipts – identity documents that allow them to move around their communities without being filtered again. But people suspected of links to the military or police are detained. Mr. Donchevskyi was a policeman until the start of the war. He knew the soldiers were looking for people with connections to law enforcement or the Ukrainian military. Over the next few weeks he would be moved from one detention center to another, interrogated and sometimes severely beaten. He will eventually be released, allowing him to leave the area with Ms Tsurikova and other family members. A receipt from the Bezymenne filtration camp, near Mariupol. Human rights groups say the way filtering is implemented in Ukraine is abusive and may violate international standards. Even in cases where Ukrainians caught in the dragnet are not captured or beaten, there are indications that some of them are being taken to Russia against their will. The Globe spoke to 12 Ukrainians who said they had been infiltrated. Many said they were questioned about whether they were connected to someone in the Ukrainian military or law enforcement, fingerprinted and photographed. Their phones and belongings were searched, and some said they were forced to strip down to their underwear so authorities could inspect their tattoos or examine their bodies for evidence that they often carried rifles. Some, like Mr. Donchevskyi, were blindfolded and repeatedly beaten. Tanya Lokshina, deputy director for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch, said some people living in Mariupol during the hostilities had no choice but to go through Russian-backed filtering and . camps. He estimated that thousands of Ukrainians have undergone the procedure. “Many people literally have no choice but to follow these orders or stay and die. And that could constitute forcible transfer, which is a violation of the laws of war,” he said. Those who don’t clear the filter often end up in jail, he said. He added that there are serious reasons for concern that some of these detainees are being subjected to torture and other forms of ill-treatment. And although some Ukrainians have gone to Russia willingly, he said, others have been taken there against their will after pleading with soldiers to let them travel to safer parts of Ukraine. Canada’s Global Affairs department called on Russia to stop the filtering. “Russia must release the prisoners and allow Ukrainian citizens to return home safely,” he said in a statement emailed to The Globe. Earlier this month, the United States also called for an end to the practice. “We call on Russia to grant external independent observers access to so-called ‘filtering’ facilities and forced deportation relocation sites in Russia,” Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken said in a public statement. It cited estimates that Moscow has forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens, many of them children, to Russia. In response, the Russian embassy in the United States published a statement on social media, saying that the accusation is an attempt by Washington to discredit the armed forces of the Russian Federation and is “apparently connected with dissatisfaction with the success of a special military operation.” . Mr. Donchevskyi shows a paper he received after spending 30 days in a facility used to hold prisoners of war. After Mr. Donchevskyi was removed from his home, he was taken to an empty house in the village, which Russian and DPR soldiers used as their headquarters. On the street in front of the house, the soldiers gathered him and a group of men and ordered them to strip from their winter clothes down to their underwear. Anyone walking down the street would have seen what was happening, he said. Soldiers checked the men’s bodies for signs that they often carried weapons or backpacks. They inspected the tattoos. Shortly before sunset, all the men were forced to board a bus, which took them to the nearby village of Sartana. There the group of men split up. The civilians were taken to the Bezimen infiltration camp, and the rest, including Mr. Doczewski, were kept in a room in a cafe. A little later, a car with DPR officers pulled up. The vehicle took him and three others to the Novoazovsk detention center, a prison located east of Mariupol. They took his belongings and kept him in a cell for two days. That, it turned out, was the easy part. DPR officers arrived, covered his head with a hood and tied his hands behind his back. He was forced into the back of a truck with 10 others and beaten. “They were hitting us with guns on purpose,” Mr Donchevskyi said. “They hit me in my kidneys, my ribs… if someone moved, they hit him. And they did it on purpose, to show their power.” Due to the hood over his head, he couldn’t see anything as he felt the blows on his body. His knees were pulled close to his chest and he couldn’t breathe. The officers screamed at the men and said they were going to drag them into the woods and kill them. Mr Donchevskyi and the other men were taken to a police station in Donetsk and ordered out of the truck. He couldn’t feel his legs or arms. “They threw me on the ground and I couldn’t get up,” he said. He was brought into a room. With his head still wrapped, he couldn’t see what was going on, but he could sense the presence of other people. Police from the DPR’s organized crime unit began teasing and humiliating the men. One of the officers asked Mr Donchevskyi about his tattoo, a design of several trees. Mr. Donchevskyi explained that he was an icon of the forest and that he loves nature. The officer asked how many trees made up the tattoo design. “I said ‘seven trees’ and he kicked my legs seven times,” Mr Donchevskyi said. “And when I dropped to my knees, he said, ‘And now you have to thank me for not starting to count branches.’ Mr. Donchevskyi’s tattoo. The men’s heads were uncovered and taken to a room where they stood for hours as they were interrogated again. They were photographed and shoved into a small cell with more than 20 others. Mr. Donchevskyi was finally arrested on April 17 for “participating in a terrorist group” and transferred to Olenivka prison, used to hold prisoners of war. There, he and other prisoners were forced to strip naked, stand against a wall and spread their legs as they were examined by a female doctor. Mr Donchevskyi spent the next month moving between overcrowded cells. All the while, the DPR anthem and Russian news were playing continuously in the background. It was hot inside the facility and prisoners were served porridge with rotten fish. The soldiers told them about how beautiful life is in the DPR. Even after all this, many of the people who suffered at Mr. Donchevskyi’s side told him that they were thinking of staying and serving in the DPR police. As his scheduled release date approached, he told prison authorities he would also serve time, hoping to allay their suspicions about him. But his plan was to pack up and disappear. After his release, Mr Donchevskyi was quickly reunited with his wife, mother and brother. The three found volunteers in different countries to take them – and their cat – to safety. The route was winding through Russia, Belarus and Poland. From there, they were able to travel to a part of Ukraine not controlled by Moscow. Mr Donchevskyi said he doesn’t want anyone else to go through what he did. He added that it is important to remember that there are still men in separatist and Russian prisons who need to be freed. Anna Vorosheva, a 46-year-old florist and party shop owner, found herself in a similar situation after DPR forces detained her at a road checkpoint. He was returning to Mariupol after helping some women from the town escape to Zaporizhia, in the west. When the soldiers brought her to a police station in Mangush, she learned that civilians are subjected to a filtering process. She was fingerprinted, then moved to another facility and thrown into a crowded cell. He was eventually taken to the organized crime department of the DPR police. After being questioned by a senior investigator, he realized how…