Russia Deporting Ukrainians?
The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues. One troubling recurring story is that Ukrainians are being removed from Ukraine. In the latest, CNN reports that:
“More than 100,000 people remain trapped in Mariupol [Ukraine], living in dire and rapidly deteriorating conditions without water, food, heat or electricity. . . .
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 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.” (bold added).
KJ
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