Vladimir Putin is resettling Ukrainians to Siberia and the Far East, Kremlin document shows

Authored by inews.co.uk and submitted by vancouver_reader

Vladimir Putin is sending thousands of Ukrainians to remote corners of Russia as far as 5,500 miles from their homes, according to Kremlin documents seen by i , as refugees report being interrogated by Putin’s troops and forced onto buses transporting them out of Ukraine.

A Russian government decree published on a Kremlin website shows Moscow made an emergency order last month to move nearly 100,000 people from the war zone to regions including Siberia, the North Caucasus, the Far East and even the Arctic Circle.

Destinations where Ukrainians are being sent include the heavily militarised republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, where Russia has fought insurgencies, and Sakhalin oblast in the Far East, which contains the Kuril Islands contested by Japan.

A clip from Russian police video which claims to show Ukrainian’s from Donetsk having their fingerprints and photographs taken in Vladivostok beneath a portrait of Vladimir Putin. The caption says police are ‘helping them to obtain the necessary documents’.

The proclamation suggests people are also being sent to Magadan on Russia’s east coast and to the Arctic port of Murmansk. None are being sent to Russia’s major cities of Moscow or St Petersburg, according to the document.

The Kremlin decree, posted on Russia’s “official portal of legal information”, says that “taking into account the current situation” in Ukraine, the Government “approves the distribution” of citizens of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as stateless persons to the “constituent entities of the Russian Federation” and says they should “ensure the reception” of 95,739 people.

On the 5th day of each month, regions must send an update on arrivals to Moscow. It includes provisions to send 11,398 people to Siberia, 7,218 to the Far East and 7,023 to the North Caucasus.

One expert on Russia and Ukraine said efforts to move people so far from the border is “deeply concerning”.

The number of people crossing the Russian border has now reached 300,000 according to the UN, with the mayor of Mariupol claiming tens of thousands are being moved against their will through Russian-controlled filtration camps.

i has also obtained documents from within Russian-controlled territory which appear to show people from Mariupol are being handed papers to sign claiming Ukrainian troops shelled the city.

The Russian typescript on the papers, which claims the signatory is a victim of Ukrainian violations of the Geneva Convention, says the documents are being used for an “investigation” being carried out by a “special case investigator” under Russia’s criminal code.

Analysis by i of Russia’s plans to move nearly 100,000 Ukrainians to all parts of Russia. Darker areas such as Murmansk in the Arctic Circle and Krasnoyarsk in Siberia are planned to take among the most people. Numbers are being taken to the North Caucasus including Chechnya, the capital of which is Grozny. (Data mapping by i visual data reporter Tom Saunders)

While this newspaper has been unable to independently verify the documents, a source said signatories are told they cannot return to Ukraine because they will face “persecution”.

i exclusively revealed the location of a Russian-controlled camp for Ukrainians at Bezimenne, 11 miles east of Mariupol, last month.

The son of two pensioners from Mariupol who passed through that camp on route to Russia has now told i how they were driven out of their bomb shelter by armed Russian soldiers.

People are questioned by uniformed officials and photographed at the camp and other transit points, he said, and handed slips giving them the right to a Russian passport. Young men are interrogated for several hours and any criticisms they make of the Ukrainian army are recorded on video, he said.

“Almost everyone, after filtering, is sent by bus to the territory of Russia,” he added. “None of our acquaintances wanted or planned to go there, but from Mariupol there is no chance to get to Ukrainian territory.”

A Russian TV news clip claims to show people arriving in the Russian city of Kazan

Dozens of Russian TV news clips analysed by i also appear show people from Ukraine, including 500 elderly and disabled claimed to be from Mariupol, arriving at temporary billets including children’s holiday camps, schools, sports centres and hotels in cities including Ulyanovsk on the Volga River, where a local news reporter said the new arrivals “wept uncontrollably”.

A family from Mariupol are reported by one local Russian news organisation to have arrived as far east as Khabarovsk Territory, just 19 miles from the Chinese border, while officials in towns along the route of the Trans-Siberian railway have also said they are waiting for arrivals.

Irkutsk, a four hour drive from the Mongolian border, said it was expecting 460 people. A couple claimed to be from Donetsk are also shown in one police video having their fingerprints and photographs taken in Vladivostok watched over by a portrait of Vladimir Putin.

i has also been told separately that, on the Crimean border, people from Mariupol and Melitopol including women in their dressing gowns and slippers, are having to wait 20 hours at the Chongar crossing in freezing temperatures while Russian border guards interrogate them and search cars before having their names listed in a “special registry”.

Sources said they are forced to sign a certificate of temporary asylum and then have their Ukrainian passport taken away. i has been unable to further verify the claim.

A satellite image captured by Maxar Technologies showing the tented camp in the Russian controlled village of Bezimenne, to the east of Mariupol. (Photo: Copyright 2022 Maxar Technologies)

Yevgeny Yaroshenko, an analyst at non-governmental organisation Crimea SOS, said people relocated into Crimea in this way cannot be considered refugees and “are likely to be victims of a war crime” under international laws.

Denys Volokha, from the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, told i : “Ukrainians simply do not want to live in Russia. Forced relocation is a war crime that was once committed in Ukraine by Hitler and Stalin.”

The news of the Ukrainians’ dispersal across Russia comes as Putin is facing a historic depopulation crisis not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union – with the Covid pandemic, low birth rates and poor life expectancy causing a decline of more than one million people in 2021.

Putin has previously said he is “haunted” by Russia’s shrinking population and has made reversing the decline a national priority by incentivising Russians to have bigger families.

Pro-Russian troops search houses in Mariupol. (Photo: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

Rasmus Nilsson, an expert in relations between Russia and Ukraine at University College London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies, said reports of Ukrainians being displaced into the Russian hinterland are “deeply concerning”.

He said: “It could be about getting some people the Russians think of as dangerous as far away as possible. Sakhalin is as far from Ukraine it can be from anything. The North Caucasus is a shorter distance, but it’s an area where Russia has a strong security presence.

“There’s a Soviet back catalogue of deporting people. They could be intending to remind Ukraine later that ‘we’ve got these people’. It sounds ghastly, but under the current circumstances, I wouldn’t put it past the Russian government at all.

“It’s telling that no people are supposed to be sent to Moscow or St Petersburg… places where people could get in touch with the Russian opposition and possibly foreign journalists.”

clarst16 on April 12nd, 2022 at 03:57 UTC »

These poor people must be terrified! The stolen Ukrainian children being ‘adopted’ by Russians must be living an absolute fucking nightmare as well. Sickening.

Aluliman on April 12nd, 2022 at 03:56 UTC »

I didn't realize Putin's attempt at emulating Stalin would be so literal.

Daddynight1 on April 12nd, 2022 at 03:33 UTC »

That is, I will be evicted from Kiev to Siberia, and some Ivan will live in my house?

Not for this, my grandfather built his house for 20 years