Fall from Charybdis to Scylla.

No sooner have they managed to flee the bombardments and sieges of their city than some Ukrainians are sent to Russian "filtration camps".

At least thirteen of these detention centers are currently in operation, according to the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), located mainly in the east of the country, around the cities of Novoazovsk, Dokoutchaievsk, Starobecheve, Bezimenne and Kazatske.

"Men are rounded up and filtered there," says Tanya Lokshina, Europe and Central Asia associate director at Humans Rights Watch.  

Vitaly is one of them.

Seeking to flee the bombs with his wife and one-year-old daughter, in early April he took advantage of a bus provided by Russian forces to escape from Mariupol in eastern Ukraine.

This vehicle is heading towards Nikolske, a small industrial town controlled by pro-Russian forces about 20 kilometers northwest of the besieged port city.

But once the family arrives, the men are quickly separated from the women and sent to a caravan to be searched.

Or rather "filtered", as claimed by the Russian forces guarding them. 

Satellite images show Russian camp for Ukrainians near Mariupol as deportation claims grow



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Strip excavations 

"We took turns getting into the caravan, two soldiers sifting through us: telephones, tattoos, personal effects", says the father of the family in an interview with the independent news site in Russian language Meduza, dated 12 may .

Vitaly is interrogated, searched, undressed.

He is ordered to explain the American eagle tattooed on his body and the absence of a messaging application in his laptop.

"I ended up proving that I had nothing to do with [the Ukrainian army]," he explains.

"In the end, they let me go." 

In the caravan, two other men in their underwear, one with his hands behind his head, facing the wall, the other sitting in a corner on the floor, are less fortunate.

"The two men were identified in anti-Russian rallies by the soldiers, if I understood correctly," continues the Ukrainian. 

"Life is Beautiful"

Vitaly is not an isolated case.

Many similar testimonies come from these "filtration camps" mainly located in the eastern region of Donbass, where pro-Russian, Russian and local separatist forces often work in tandem.

Some are taken there by force, others go there on their own, forced to follow the Russian evacuation process from the besieged areas. 

These filtering operations are not restricted to men.

Anna Zaytseva, a French teacher in Mariupol, also paid the price.

Her husband was taken prisoner of war while fighting with the Azov Regiment - a Ukrainian far-right volunteer battalion.

She too was interrogated and strip searched during her evacuation from the city.

"After they asked me to undress, they saw a tattoo where it says 'La vie est belle' in French. They [the soldiers] didn't think it was French but German . They saw it as proof that I had, in one way or another, ties to the Nazis." 

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Donbass under Russian fire © France24

"Villages turn into internment camps" 

There is no doubt, for HRW humanitarian, Tanya Lokshina, that these filtration camps are "very intrusive and painful" with operations that can last several days or even several weeks.

She also holds, as proof, the testimony of a man sent at the end of April to a "filtration camp" in Kazatske, alongside 200 other individuals, whom her organization was able to recover.

Although the screening lasted only a few days, these men were deprived of their passports.

However, without this precious document, it is impossible to escape the region criss-crossed by soldiers.

"Trying to leave these villages without a passport is suicide. Even though they are not locked down as such, the villages look deceptively like open-air internment camps." 

In the meantime, the detainees have been placed in a municipal school, in almost prison-like conditions, receiving nothing but rice, bread and pasta.

“They were mostly sleeping on desks and in hallways. Many of them got sick, contracting respiratory illnesses, probably Covid-19, flus and all sorts of illnesses related to poor water quality. people were vomiting, had diarrhea. It was horrible," says Tanya Lokshina.

In the end, their detention lasted forty days without them understanding the reasons.

01:36

© France 24

One of them, however, tried to understand the situation.

"The soldiers of the DPR [the People's Republic of Donetsk, self-proclaimed by pro-Russian separatists in 2014, Editor's note] came to get him," explains the director of Human Rights Watch.

"They said to him: 'So, do you have any questions about the reasons for your detention? We will answer them.'

Then they took him away. When they brought him back, four days later, he was completely haggard. He did not say a word about what had happened to him. Although he bore no visible signs of torture. , everything suggests that he had an intense and painful experience."

Kazatske's men eventually got their passports back and were released.

But no explanation has ever been given for the reasons for their long incarceration. 

Shadow areas

When Ukrainians manage to pass the filtration tests, they receive a document stamped with the letters FP - Filtration Point -, a precious sesame which allows them to move "freely" within and around the Donetsk region.

"As for those who do not pass these filters, we know little about their real fate," said Tanya Lokshina.

A group of men detained in Bezimenne did try to film the living conditions of the "filtration camp" in which they had been confined.

They published the video on the Internet, relates Tanya Lokshina.

But after it was posted on social media, guards rounded them up and took them away.

"According to reliable but unofficial information, it seems that they are in prison, in territory controlled by the DPR. They are accused of having filmed without authorization and of having disseminated false news."  

"Scary" 

Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin denies the existence of these "filtration camps", calling them "lies".

For their part, the authorities of the self-proclaimed DPR also reject all Ukrainian accusations of detention, filtering and ill-treatment of civilians, within what they officially call "reception centers".  

At the international level, these camps are the subject of severe recriminations.

They are even sometimes compared to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.

"Reports indicate that Russian Federal Security agents are confiscating passports and IDs, taking away cell phones and separating families from each other," said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Ambassador to the United States. United Nations, during a press briefing on April 5 before the UN Security Council.

"I don't need to elaborate on what these so-called filter camps look like. It's scary and we can't look away."

Text translated from English by Aude Mazoué

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