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<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSafety: Four-year-old Alisa in Zaporizhzhia after she became separated from her mum in a filtration camp. The papers disclose how 1,310 transit centres were set up to handle captured Ukrainians in a sinister move that has been compared to mass deportations of the Soviet Union\u2019s darkest days<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Ukrainian officials have revealed that thousands of men rounded up by Vladimir Putin\u2019s troops are also being used as forced labour. They are ordered to search destroyed Ukrainian buildings for unexploded munitions and to get rid of evidence of mass slaughter.<\/p>\n
\u2018They send them like human shields to walk around buildings that are not fully destroyed and might contain explosives,\u2019 said Liudmyla Denisova, Ukraine\u2019s Human Rights Ombudsman.<\/p>\n
Forced labourers are also ordered to collect, burn or bury the bodies of fellow Ukrainians \u2013 such as those among the 600 killed in bombing while hiding in the basement of Mariupol Theatre two months ago.<\/p>\n
\u2018This is just horrible,\u2019 said Denisova. \u2018Just imagine: they must remove the bodies, pile them up or put them in bags, then take them somewhere to be dumped in mass graves. It is exactly like Hitler\u2019s atrocities.\u2019<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\nUkrainian officials have revealed that thousands of men rounded up by Vladimir Putin\u2019s troops are also being used as forced labour<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In March, the Daily Mail detailed the first eye-witness account of Putin\u2019s sinister system of forced evacuations and the use of filtration camps \u2013 a tactic pioneered by Stalin. Now our investigations can reveal that:<\/p>\n
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- Russian officials are screening all Ukrainians on captured land for government or military links, forcing them to have documentary proof of passing through \u2018filtration\u2019;<\/li>\n
- The Kremlin is taking all their mobile phone data, along with fingerprints and photographs, sparking fears such information will be fed into a Chinese-style surveillance system using facial recognition technology that can monitor people\u2019s future movement;<\/li>\n
- Ukrainians who have evacuated to Russia are being pressured to remain there, and warned they face prison if they try to go home;<\/li>\n
- An estimated one in ten people \u2018fail\u2019 the filtration system \u2013 and disappear into a network of camps and prisons notorious for torture run by Putin\u2019s stooges in the self-declared Donbas republics;<\/li>\n
- One man who escaped a camp told of being beaten and tortured with electric shocks in a secretive prison meant to hold 750 inmates but had 3,000 crammed inside;<\/li>\n
- Sweeps by Russian forces have rounded up all men from some occupied villages, taking them into captivity and subjecting them to forced labour;<\/li>\n
- About 2,000 children have been removed from orphanages in the Donbas region, provoking fears they will be given to Russian families after Putin announced that rules for adoptions from Ukraine will be eased.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The horrors of Putin\u2019s filtration policies were highlighted last week when a four-year-old girl called Alisa arrived in Zaporizhzhia, a city in south Ukraine, after her evacuation from Mariupol.<\/p>\n
This little girl \u2013 who was filmed pleading for help as she sheltered in a bunker beneath the city\u2019s besieged Azovstal steel plant \u2013 had endured a 29-hour bus journey with just a backpack containing some clothes and a note from her mother Viktoria Obdina asking relatives to care for her child.<\/p>\n
Viktoria disappeared after the pair were separated in a key filtration camp at Bezymianny, 20 miles from Mariupol. Her \u2018crime\u2019 was to be a doctor tending to Ukrainian fighters wounded in the battle for Azovstal.<\/p>\n
Russian forces had interrogated them and looked for any links they had with the Ukrainian government \u2013 such as pictures on phones, patriotic tattoos or any signs lingering on their body of weapon use.<\/p>\n
One of Alisa\u2019s fellow bus passengers said: \u2018They checked us, they undressed us, they looked at us.\u2019<\/p>\n
Women escaping the hell of Mariupol have told also of being forced to strip naked and being questioned alone for several hours by heavily-armed men demanding access to all data on their phones.<\/p>\n
For some, the process takes just a few hours but others are held for weeks. One man said he saw a woman led away for possessing a pro-Ukraine poster, then was warned the only way out was to join Moscow\u2019s army and send his family to Russia. \u2018People have told us they have been beaten during this filtration procedure,\u2018 said Oleksandra Matviychuk, head of Kyiv\u2019s Centre for Civil Liberties. \u2018They told us they heard people are being killed but it needs further investigation.\u2019<\/p>\n
Filtration camps were used after the Second World War when Stalin\u2019s goons screened Soviet prisoners of war and citizens who had been held by the Nazis, sending almost 300,000 into gulags for supposed ideological impurities.<\/p>\n
The policy was revived between 1994 and 2003 during Moscow\u2019s two wars against Muslim separatists in Chechnya, leading to global condemnation of \u2018unspeakable\u2019 abuses such as mass internment, rape and torture. Many detainees were never seen again.<\/p>\n
Tetiana Lomakina, the Ukrainian president\u2019s adviser on humanitarian corridors, said it was becoming impossible to move around occupied areas without passing through the filtration process which is being \u2018jointly conducted by Russian military and intelligence\u2019.<\/p>\n
She said: \u2018The main goal is to find and exterminate all Ukrainians who have connections with the armed forces of Ukraine, officials or local authorities.<\/p>\n
\u2018But also, during the questioning, they try to scare people, to make sure they do not go to territories controlled by Ukraine.\u2019<\/p>\n
Documents passed to the Mail by Ukrainian officials not only reveal details of the Kremlin\u2019s strategy for refugees, with officials across the country identifying locations to hold them, but also how it was planned before the invasion. Both Kyiv and Moscow say 1.2million people have been taken over the border to Russia.<\/p>\n
One document gives regional breakdowns of 684 \u2018planned\u2019 transit centres for 102,495 people.<\/p>\n
It lists 152 \u2018ready to receive\u2019 from 6am on February 21 \u2013 three days before full invasion \u2013 and identifies dates when others will become operational. A second document dated from April 29 lists 1,310 \u2018facilities\u2019 as available to hold Ukrainians \u2013 showing that 33,474 people, including 11,637 children, were held in 496 different centres. Human Rights chief Denisova said the documents prove the policy was planned at the highest level.<\/p>\n
She fears Putin plans to take two million Ukrainians \u2013 almost five per cent of the population. Forced deportation was practised by both Tsarist and Communist rulers, who transported vast numbers of people from the Baltic States, Caucasus and Crimea to underpopulated areas such as Siberia and the steppes of Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n
\u2018This is routine for Russian history,\u2019 said Mikhail Matveev, a human rights activist who helps Ukrainians to escape. \u2018They deport populations to silence them and then replace them by moving in loyal people.\u2019<\/p>\n
Many of those fleeing Putin\u2019s assault are desperate for sanctuary and suffering shock. Typical is Natalia, 44, who fled Mariupol with her husband and elderly mother after their apartment was hit by a missile last month.<\/p>\n
She says: \u2018We knew we had to flee, otherwise we would die. But I was not thinking where and how would we go. We just needed to get out. I was like a zombie.\u2019<\/p>\n
She was taken to Opukhliki, a Russian village 800 miles north of Mariupol. \u2018We had no money, no belongings, nothing.<\/p>\n
\u2018We were offered legal status and to stay in Russia. But we declined. It\u2019s very beautiful but all I wanted was to be at home.\u2019<\/p>\n
Natalia was fortunate: she escaped Russia with the help of a sister living in Israel and human rights activists who raised funds.<\/p>\n
It should be added that many Ukrainian refugees are greeted warmly by local volunteers offering help with clothing, food and shelter. Indeed, Putin\u2019s propaganda machine exploits such acts of humanity and kindness to show his nation welcomes those escaping the conflict which was caused, in his twisted narrative, by Nato aggression and neo-Nazi politicians in Kyiv.<\/p>\n
Some Ukrainians find themselves in incrediblly remote parts of Russia \u2013 such as 308 refugees from Mariupol who were taken on a ten-day train journey to Vrangel, a coastal settlement close to North Korea more than 5,500 miles away.<\/p>\n
Oleg, 38, a construction worker, was transported there with his wife Anna, 32, after volunteers from United Russia \u2013 Putin\u2019s political party \u2013 distributed food aid in Mariupol and offered them sanctuary. Having passed through filtration and been warned they could not leave Russia, the couple were told they were going to the city of Vladivostok \u2013 and were then dismayed to end up in a small seaside town 118 miles further east.<\/p>\n
\u2018I did not want to stay in Russia because they killed our city,\u2019 said Oleg. \u2018Who would want to stay? Imagine you are at war with a country \u2013 and it comes into your city, destroys your home and then says: stay with us, you can even work for us.\u2019<\/p>\n
Oleg was helped to escape \u2013 flying to Moscow and then travelling to Latvia \u2013 by an informal Russian network of activists and fundraisers. One priest in St Petersburg estimated that ten per cent of refugees wanted to leave their homes, that a similar number planned to stay but that \u2018most simply do not know what to do\u2019. He said: \u2018Many had never left Mariupol before. They say, \u2018We don\u2019t know anything, never been anywhere\u201d.\u2019<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe transit facilities and forced evacuations into far-flung parts of Russia are linked to a ruthless system of so-called \u2018filtration camps\u2019 set up on occupied Ukrainian terrain to seize those deemed enemies of their state and funnel others into the country. People are pictured arriving into Russia on trains<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
An activist who visited a transit camp holding 56 Ukrainians near Ryazan, in central Russia, said he saw senior officials trying to persuade them to accept a legal status that would prevent them from leaving the province with promises of citizenship.<\/p>\n
He also heard officials falsely claim that anyone leaving Ukraine without permission for longer than 15 days faced a lengthy prison sentence if they returned home.<\/p>\n
Victoria Ivleva, a Russian journalist, has described what she calls \u2018fragile\u2019 refugees being snared by Putin, saying: \u2018This may be saving their lives but it is a trap.\u2019<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials are alarmed about the welfare of anyone who fails the filtration process, as stories emerge of distressed citizens forced to leave behind family members as they flee the conflict zone.<\/p>\n
One woman described how a man in his early 20s was taken away for questioning as he fled Mariupol but never returned. \u2018His mother is desperate, having not heard from him for five weeks,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
Petro Andriushchenko, adviser to Mariupol\u2019s mayor, said data indicates about one in ten people fail filtration. He says Russians are sending anyone believed to be a threat to them \u2013 such as activists, journalists, family members of Ukrainians serving in the military and former law enforcement officials \u2013 to the occupied Donetsk region.<\/p>\n
He believes many are detained in two prisons that are renowned for using torture, including electric shocks and mock executions. There is also video footage shot covertly by men held for several weeks in a school.<\/p>\n
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