INews, an independent news source in the UK, is reporting that a network of former Soviet sanatoriums and other sites in regions including Siberia, the Caucasus, the Arctic Circle, and the Far East, are housing Ukrainians forcibly removed from their homeland. Some of the camps are up to 5,500 miles from Ukraine.
Moscow had ordered Russian cities and towns to prepare for almost 100,000 “refugees.”
It is obvious that the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who live in areas occupied by Russian military bases are not currently living in Ukraine. The Russian government now claims it has “evacuated” one million people from the war zone. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in April that 500,000 Ukrainians had been sent to Russia.
INews interviewed human rights activists from Ukraine, who helped people escape these camps.
Forced transfer refers to when people are forced from their territory by an occupier power to flee or to continue to be shelled.
“When people are only given a choice to stay under increasingly heavy shelling or to enter the territory of an occupying power, it constitutes forced transfer under international humanitarian law.
“We are extremely concerned this is happening. People who seek evacuation to safer areas in Ukraine are shuttled off to Russia instead – in some cases to remote areas very far from Ukrainian or European borders.
“They are vulnerable, destitute, often without identification documents and find themselves at the mercy of the occupying power.”
These are known as Temporary Accommodation Points (TAP) or temporary accommodation points or TAP. These camps were established to “reeducate” soldiers.
Putin seems to have far simpler motivations. Ukrainians can sometimes be placed in dangerous jobs.
The new center, which promotes a “commitment to serving one Motherland” and “military-patriotic works”, was established at the old orphanage in February. It was created as part of a national “education” project, which Putin initiated to establish 40 centers like this one in Russia’s-controlled Crimea.
It is one of the two military-linked places identified by i. The newspaper revealed that 600 Ukrainians including Mariupol survivors were taken to Leonidovka’s former chemical weapons dump. This former location, located near Penza, Russia, was instrumental in the destruction of the country’s nerve agent arsenal.
Putin made sure that the camps were distributed across the vast Russian Eurasian Landmass. Putin did not allow more than 100 Ukrainians to be placed in one place.
Maxar Technologies captured a satellite photo in March that showed that Russian-backed forces had begun building a temporary camp in Bezimenne with blue-and-white regimented tents. This village is located near Mariupol, in south-eastern Ukraine.
Russian officials only want to protect their “guests”, in the token. There is nowhere to stay in remote locations where camps have been set up.
A few Ukrainians managed to escape these TAPs and made the difficult journey from Ukraine to Poland where they began to tell their stories.