REPORTAGE
Ukraine: in Zaporijjia, displaced people flee forced recruitment into Russian forces
Audio 01:27
Ukrainian refugees fleeing regions occupied by pro-Russian forces board a bus in Zaporijjia, September 7, 2022. © Anastasia Becchio / RFI
Text by: RFI Follow
4 mins
With the intensification of Ukrainian army operations in the south and east, thousands of people are fleeing combat zones and regions held by the Russian army, such as Kherson.
While most of the displaced are women and children, including some families who don't want a Russian school, men are also fleeing to avoid being forcibly enrolled in the Russian army or after being tortured.
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With our special correspondents in Zaporijjia,
Anastasia Becchio
and
Boris Vichith
A column of cars has just arrived in the parking lot of the Epitsentr shopping center, a compulsory passage for all vehicles coming from the areas occupied by the Russian army.
Viktor fled his village of Ivanivka after being visited by armed men:
“
They came to my house and told me that they were going to take me and that I was going to have to fight for Russia and defend Kherson.
I told them I was a pacifist and I didn't want to fight, what else could I tell them?
Three of them came with their automatic rifles and I only have an axe.
It was very unpleasant
.
»
After this visit, Viktor, who served in the Ukrainian navy in the 1990s, borrowed the equivalent of 250 euros to pay a driver who took him and his family to Zaporizhia.
►
To read also:
War in Ukraine: young Russians try to escape military service
Fear of being abducted to “
go to the massage
”
Arriving in a minibus, Dmitri and his wife were worried about their 18-year-old son.
He hardly ever went out for fear of being kidnapped.
The locals have invented an expression: "
Going to the massage
", that is to say to be kidnapped and tortured, explains the father who himself was recently arrested:
“
They stopped me because they thought I was walking too fast.
I had almost arrived at my house and they challenged me for that.
All you have to do is give them a look that they don't like and they send you to the
"massage".
One of my friends spent five days at home, five days tied up without even being able to go to the bathroom.
It is an attack on human dignity, as in the days of the USSR.
»
Dmitri got away with a big scare, but wanted to leave as soon as possible.
The family expects to be hosted by friends in western Ukraine while waiting, he said, for
the Ukrainian counter-offensive
to drive out the occupiers.
"
You don't teach children from the cradle that you have to kill people
"
Among the displaced, many are fleeing the regions occupied by the pro-Russian forces, in particular mothers of families who, at the start of the school year, are worried about the school future of their children: they prefer to flee to
enroll their children in Russian school
.
Seated under a large white tent set up in the parking lot of a shopping center, Anna Potapova surrounded by her two children, aged 14 and 16, waits for the bus that will take them to western Ukraine, at this crossing point for all vehicles coming from areas occupied by the Russians.
If she left her town of Kakhovka, it was because of the fighting, but also so that her children could continue to study in a Ukrainian college.
“
On the first day of school, they put armored vehicles in the schoolyard and they showed them how to load and unload an automatic rifle.
At home, in Ukrainian schools, children are not taught from the cradle that they have to go to war, that they have to go and kill people.
»
With her three children, Vika managed after a few days to find a driver to flee her village in the Kherson region.
“
My eldest son had to enter CP.
I was told: "
Are you
enrolling him in the Russian school?
" I replied: "
He doesn't understand Russian, why should I enroll him there?
"
and if you do not register it, we will put your children in an orphanage, we will deprive you of your parental rights
".
I gave them life, I raised them and I should part with them just because I don't want them to study in the Russian school?
»
After spending two nights in schools in Zaporijjia, Vika and her children boarded a bus for kyiv: they will be accommodated in a farm near the capital.
Ukrainian families flee Russian-occupied areas to prevent their children from attending Russian schooling
Anastasia Becchio Boris Vichith
►
To read also:
Ukraine: in Odessa, Marina waits for Kherson to be taken back from the Russians
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