A bus carrying Ukrainians evacuated in May from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol arrives in the village of Bezymenne, closer to the Russian border, in May. Credit… Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
Russian authorities have “interrogated, detained and forcibly deported” between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens, including 260,000 children, from their homes on Russian soil, often in isolated regions in the Far East, said US Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken in a statement Wednesday.
“The illegal transfer and deportation of protected persons,” Mr. Blinken said, “is a serious violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilians and is a war crime.”
Mr Blinken noted that he was releasing the statement on the eve of the Ukraine Accountability Conference being held in The Hague on Thursday. The conference’s website says its goal is “to ensure that war crimes committed during the war in Ukraine do not go unpunished.” The hosts are the Dutch government, the Prosecutor’s Office of the International Criminal Court and the European Commission.
Russia has acknowledged that 1.5 million Ukrainians are now in Russia, but has assured that they have been evacuated for their own safety.
Ukrainian officials have long raised the alarm about the deportations to Russia, with President Volodymyr Zelensky last month describing them as “one of Russia’s most heinous war crimes.” Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, he said, deportations have included more than 200,000 children.
Testimony given to the New York Times and other news outlets by deportees who fled Russia included descriptions of filtering sites and accounts of interrogations, beatings and torture of those believed to have ties to Ukraine’s armed forces, and about disappearances.
European officials described the filtering sites as being set up as schools, sports centers and cultural institutions in parts of Ukraine recently seized by Russian forces.
From these sites, many Ukrainians were transported to destinations in Russia — often to regions far from Ukraine, near China or Japan, according to testimony.
Some US officials have previously expressed concern about the deportations, but have given only vague estimates of the scale.
Michael Carpenter, the United States ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said during a speech in Vienna in May that many witnesses had given detailed accounts of Russia’s “brutal interrogations” at the filtration camps, in which at least several thousands of Ukrainians were forced and deportations of at least tens of thousands.
Mr Blinken’s statement on Wednesday also noted reports suggesting Russian forces were “deliberately” separating Ukrainian children from their parents and abducting others from orphanages. Witnesses and survivors, the statement said, described “frequent threats, harassment and incidents of torture by Russian security forces.”
In some cases, the statement said, passports of Ukrainians were confiscated and they were issued with Russian passports instead, “in an apparent attempt to change the demographic composition of parts of Ukraine.”
There is also growing evidence, the statement said, that Russian authorities are “detaining or disappearing thousands of Ukrainian civilians” who have not passed the filtering process, including those associated with Ukraine’s military, territorial defense forces, media, government and civil society. society groups.
The statement said reports also indicated that Russian authorities transported tens of thousands of people to detention centers in Russian-controlled Donetsk, where many were tortured. According to the reports, others were “executed in a speedy manner, in accordance with the evidence of Russian atrocities committed in Bucha, Mariupol and other places in Ukraine.”
Mr. Blinken’s statement said the United States called for an immediate halt to the deportations and for the Russian authorities to release the detainees and allow them to return home. Independent outside observers, the statement said, should be allowed access to the so-called filtering facilities that serve as a staging post for many deportations, as well as to the places where Ukrainians have been deported.
“President Putin and his government will not be able to engage in these systematic abuses with impunity,” the statement said. “Accountability is imperative.”
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