At least 10,000 Mariupol civilians are in filtration prisons of various levels. Now, in the temporarily occupied territories, all people are obliged to undergo this filtering. But at present, this repressive practice appears as background and has not been finally condemned at the international community level. OPORA analysts and invited experts spoke about this during the traditional Monday online discussion "The Occupied" on June 27.
According to OPORA's senior analyst Oleksandr Kliuzhev, in the long-occupied territory of Donbas, the main topic in the informational space was active hostilities, which took place, in particular, in Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, and other cities. "After the planned withdrawal of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from Severodonetsk, representatives of the occupation administrations actively announced the creation of so-called new authorities in this Ukrainian city. It was in fact at the center of their propaganda activities," Oleksandr Kliuzhev said. Among other events in the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the analyst notes, there is the strengthening of the repressions. They copied russia's work on responsibility for so-called fakes at the level of their pseudo-legislation. "Now all citizens of Ukraine living in the temporarily occupied territories are subject to criminal liability for spreading information that the occupier does not like. That is, here the flywheel of repression is even more intensified in conditions when all unacceptable methods are applied to our citizens anyway," Oleksandr Kliuzhev says. According to him another important topic was the mock trials of Ukrainian prisoners of war who are foreign volunteers. And it reached even a high political level of commenting in russia. "It seems that in the conditions when the russian federation blackmails the civilized world, this civilized world should give some kind of consolidated response to the attempts to 'trade' the fate of citizens and the fate of prisoners of war," Oleksandr Kliuzhev said.
Stanislav Miroshnychenko, the journalist of the Media Initiative for Human Rights, notes that from the point of view of international humanitarian law, there is no such thing as "filtering". Instead, what is happening in the occupied territories in this context has certain signs of internment. This is when the occupying power takes certain actions against citizens who, in its opinion, pose a danger to that occupying power. "There must be absolute grounds for this, i.e. 100% these people must pose a threat. Obviously, this is not the case, because it is a widespread phenomenon. Yes, if at the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the russian federation into Ukraine, it had such an unsystematic character, the checks were quite chaotic, but they were still there, now it is a built-in system and it operates at absolutely all occupied territories", Stanislav Miroshnychenko says. The expert notes that these filtering processes are not some phenomenon that appeared now. This has been happening since 2014, in particular, the well-known "Isolation", where people underwent such filtering. "Now in the temporarily occupied territories absolutely all people are obliged to undergo this filtering. How many millions of people, Ukrainians are there, they are all obliged. Without this filtering, a person cannot move through the territory within the settlement. Any persom must have two documents: 1) a certificate of passing this filtering, 2) a proof that the person has been fingerprinted—fingerprints and palm prints have been taken," Stanislav Miroshnychenko noted.
According to him, officially the Ukrainian authorities estimate that more than 2 million Ukrainians have actually been deported to russia, including more than 300 thousand children. The expert assumes that such mass filtering is a reaction in view of the tangible resistance of Ukrainians in the newly occupied territories. "It is obvious that the main goal pursued by the russian federation is to check people's loyalty to the occupation authorities," Stanislav Miroshnychenko said. According to him, people who do not pass the filter fall into the hands of the FSB, pass through pseudo-courts, and end up in the exchange fund. In particular, when part of the territory in the North of the country was occupied by russia, they also took civilians and changed them into military uniforms or in some other way simulated a person's belonging to the military. "I want to emphasize that for russia, there is no difference whether there is a civilian or a military person. They call everyone military precisely for the exchange fund", Stanislav Miroshnychenko said. Currently, 22 filtration camp locations have been precisely determined. And people can stay there for weeks or months. He also said that filtering practices can also take place on the territory of Russia. In particular, if the FSB at the border does not like something, they call the police, accuse a person of disobedience, and send them to court, which sentences them to a certain term. All this time a person can be in the basement, and all this time they can be tortured by the FSB. The police are just making sure that the person serves their time. If at the end of this term a person is taken to a polygraph and passes it, then they can be released. What happens to people to whom the FSB does not prescribe a polygraph is unknown.
Yuliya Pustovit, a resident of the city of Rubizhne in the Luhansk region, shared her own experience of undergoing filtration. The main advice from her is not to give documents to anyone and not to sign anything. According to her, representatives of the so-called "LNR" took her family and another family from Rubizhnye to Starobilsk by car. From there, about 200 people were taken by train to the border with russia in Milove. They could interrogate and check them for a very long time there, 12-20 hours at a time, especially men. Then they went to the Voronezh region, where they were placed in a children's art school for a day, and then sent to St. Petersburg. Through social networks and Kyiv volunteers, Yulia found a person with whom she could stay for a day, and who then helped her get to Ivangorod, which is on the border with Estonia. In total, her family reached Estonia in 5 days. Yulia says that she was interrogated the most and most often in St. Petersburg. She had to lie a lot. Her children were also questioned. "Good people, run away from that russia. It's scary there. My friends were taken to Siberia and their documents were taken away," Yuliya Pustovit said. She also says that in Rubizhne, they took people's passports, especially young people's, so that they could not leave anywhere. It was also possible to negotiate departure for a bribe of $100—this has already turned into a local business. During the filtering, she was asked if any of her relatives are serving in the military, whether she is a military member, whether there are politicians among her relatives, she was asked about her attitude to the Ukrainian language, how well she communicates in it, whether she is satisfied that people in Donbas were forced to speak Ukrainian. "Although no one forced us, we had the right to choose which language to communicate in. But russia thinks that Donbas was forced to speak Ukrainian. They are liberating us from Ukraine," Yuliya Pustovit said.
Petro Andriushchenko, the adviser to the Mariupol mayor, believes that the sole purpose of filtering is to secure the occupation regime. That is, to find all possible points of resistance, potentially unreliable and dangerous persons in the occupied territories, thus ensuring the further functioning of the regime. According to him, the filtering process is generally managed by the FSB. Initially, the first interrogations of people as part of the filtering procedure at the filtering points were carried out by the MGB of the so-called "DNR" together with the FSB. Now, it has mostly been given to collaborators: policemen who crossed over to the other side, policemen who came from Donetsk. The procedure itself softened somewhat. "We have to understand that there are no people who make any decisions among the collaborators in Donetsk. Any collaborative government is irrelevant, starting with Pushylin and ending with the lowest level soldier in the trenches—a person who simply does the russian will. No one even has room for maneuver," Petro Andriushchenko says.
According to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova, more than 200 permanent or temporary places of detention for not only military personnel, but also civilians, volunteers, and journalists have been created in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. "Around 10,000 Mariupol residents are in various types of filtration prisons of various regimes. This applies both to the colony, which is located in Kozatske and Bezymenne, and to the prisons directly in the pre-trial detention center of Donetsk and Makiivka. That is, somewhere at least 10,000 Mariupol civilians are in filtration prisons of various levels," Petro Andriushchenko says. He also notes that there is no immunity from filtering either by gender, age, or views. The requirement of 100% filtering in the city of Mariupol is fulfilled. It is clear that the organizers—those whom we call Russian collaborators before they took over—had a certain immunity. "Almost all of them have been filtered. Apparently, people who postponed this question for a certain time for reasons that we understand, and people for whom this is a purely physiological problem—elderly people who find it difficult to go—did not pass the filter. In general, there is a completely different attitude towards the elderly and pensioners there—it is generally soft, and no one asks them questions during the filtering itself for the most part. And so it can be said that almost 100% of the entire population of Mariupol has passed filtering. People who are not filtered are rather exceptions," Petro Andriushchenko explained. According to him, the FSB compiled the first list of undesirable persons in the Mariupol district. Such lists of activists existed around since 2015-2016. Then there were lists compiled by collaborators—utility workers, doctors, teachers, local politicians. There are also practices of denunciations and arrests as methods of fighting business owners in order to further "squeeze" these businesses. For example, this practice exists in Urzuf by the former head of the local council during Yanukovych's time.
Regarding the influence of international organizations on the situation, Petro Andriushchenko expressed his own opinion: "When we talk about international organizations from the point of view of Mariupol, I always have a very bad question—do they exist in reality further than on paper? As for filtering, let's talk without emotion, without criticism, just the facts. I think everyone can draw their own conclusions. I will simply state the facts—it is better than any emotion. Evacuation of civilians from Azovstal. All civilians who were evacuated from Azovstal were filtered. Both the UN and the Red Cross were present at the filtering point. I don't want to go further. Our large journalistic community, including OPORA, I think, will now very easily see how many people left Azovstal, and how many reached the territory controlled by Ukraine. And, in fact, this is the answer, whether the international organizations intervened or not, how they affected the filtering processes, and under whose eyes it took place. Therefore, this is not an official opinion, I probably have the right to it as a citizen, but after the Red Cross opened a camp for refugees from Mariupol in the territory of the Rostov region, after the evacuation of civilians from Azovstal took place—I don't know. It is very loud, it is very cool that we have international human rights organizations, but I would still like to see their work. It is a well-known fact about the Red Cross that when they tried to evacuate people and reached Mangush, they were arrested in Mangush at the filtering point and kept under arrest for a day. These are representatives of the International Red Cross. This is all efficiency and effectiveness of this work—no institute works. This may not be a question for the institutions, but it is still a question for the russians because they just don't like it. And there is no point in relying on anyone other than the Armed Forces of Ukraine in our case. That is the whole answer to this question from the point of view of intervention. And when you look at these situations from a purely detached perspective—at the numbers and procedures, I think you will have many more questions for international organizations than I do."
He also said that he is now cooperating very fruitfully with law enforcement officers regarding collaborators and their participation in war crimes. According to Andriushchenko, this is a completely different situation compared to 2014, and, accordingly, the result may be completely different. In his opinion, if it had been this way from the very beginning, it would be much easier for everyone now.
The expert also gave several recommendations for filtering. According to him, it is worth looking for people who are currently helping to pass the filtering, because corruption works. In addition, the occupiers themselves are already tired of filtering, it has fallen asleep and is going to waste, so now it is mostly done by locals. Now there are already ways to pass it safe enough and it is not a big secret in the cities where it is done. Therefore, you need to look for this source and follow this path. "Today, filtering is no longer such a big problem for those who stayed, at least in Mariupol. The main peak is over. It was most brutal when it was possible to evacuate to Ukraine. For obvious reasons. Now it is calming down a little there. Plus, they took away the military corps, the FSB corps has shrunk. They consider the territory to be safe, so it's a little easier now," Petro Andriushchenko said.
The US ambassador to the OSCE Michael Carpenter said back in May: "The sadistic atrocities and the very deliberate process of “filtration” may well serve a purpose. Particularly if that purpose were to negate the very concept of Ukrainian statehood." According to Oleksandr Klyuzhev, in fact, you can't say better. "Not only that, this is an obviously illegal and illegitimate practice from the point of view of international standards. But this is also a purposeful policy of cleansing Ukraine on Ukrainian territories. Unfortunately, that's how it is," Oleksandr Klyuzhev noted
According to OPORA's analyst Oleksandr Neberykut, filtering is one of the features of rashism. This should not be forgotten when we try to describe the concept of rashism through similarities with other totalitarian regimes, but also to show the uniqueness of these approaches. "It seems to me that this practice of repressive filtering reveals the intentions that sounded like denazification. We've all thought about what it might look like—and this is what it might look like. And the whole absurdity of the situation boils down to the fact that the so-called denazification is experienced by people in predominantly russian-speaking cities who absolutely do not advertise, do not practice, do not profess even close to nationalist views. They can be labeled as liberals or whatever. But these are absolutely not people who fall under the concept of denazification, that is, they do not fall under any of the criteria if we give it some meaning. But, nevertheless, the russian federation—the aggressor country—found a way to resort to repressions, embellishing them with completely invented concepts that are beautiful in words. We will work with this in order not only to make it impossible to implement these practical actions that the russian federation is resorting to. But also to destroy these concepts, which do not have any basis except for the misanthropic position that they implement," Oleksandr Neberykut said.
According to Oleksandr Kliuzhev, the problem of population filtering at the level of the international community did not receive the resonance it should have received. "I'm not saying that this problem is being silenced, but it actually appears as a background, secondary issue, without specific conclusions and a clear irrevocable assessment that this is actually a Nazi practice on the part of the occupying state," Oleksandr Kliuzhev said. According to him, the occupying power publicly declares and directly admits that they hunt down people they don't like. And such a practice can definitely be the subject of a harsh assessment by the international community and the imposition of new sanctions. Here, the civilized world must be united in a clear, unappealable definition of this practice on the part of the russian federation.