On Wednesday, as the US rolled out a new wave of financial sanctions, the mayor of Mariupol spoke out on how thousands of residents have been forcibly deported and sent to Russian “filtration camps” in occupied eastern Ukraine.
Residents of Ukraine’s besieged city are being separated from their families and stripped of their passports and identification cards. The number of people affected has been estimated to be nearly 31,000.
In a Telegram post-Friday, Mayor Vadym Boychenko said he had “verified” that Ukrainians from the southern port city were being taken “at gunpoint” to “filtration camps.”
The camp is said to be located in Novoazovsk – a Ukrainian border town 35 miles from Mariupol and just 9 miles from the Russian border. It is located in the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Just days before the February 24 invasion, the Russian State Duma passed a bill officially recognizing the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, which was then signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to a translation by a Ukrainian news agency, he described:
“Filtration is very strict – fingerprints are taken, as well as biometrics. They force people to sign various documents.”
Ukrainians have been at the camps for weeks and several government employees have been treated particularly harshly.
More details from the Fox News report:
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said this week that she has seen “credible reports” that support the filtration camp claims and noted that Ukrainians are being separated from their families and stripped of their passports and identification cards.
“I do not need to spell out what these so-called filtration camps are reminiscent of. It’s chilling, and we cannot look away,” she said in an address to the UN Security Council, alluding to Nazi-era concentration camps. “Every day we see more and more how little Russia respects human rights.”
The Mariupol City Council has estimated that over 100,000 residents are still trapped inside the partially occupied city, but evacuation efforts remain stalled.
Humanitarian corridors have allegedly been agreed to by Russian troops, but aid organizations have been unable to reach the city that has been rocketed by shelling for more than six weeks.
Boychenko said in late March that 90 percent of all residential buildings had been destroyed and thousands are without water, electricity, or heat.
An estimated 5,000 Mariupol residents have been killed according to the mayor, and reports have surfaced that a mobile crematorium is being used by Russian troops to cover up their alleged war crimes.
“The world has not seen the scale of the tragedy in Mariupol since the existence of the Nazi concentration camps. Russia-occupation forces turned our entire city into a death camp,” Boychenko said this week. “This is the new Auschwitz and Majdanek.”
The U.S., NATO, and Ukraine have warned that Russia is looking to launch a “major offensive” in eastern Ukraine after it failed to take the capital city of Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed to keep fighting Russian forces as they prepare for a brutal fight in the Donbas region.
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Source: FoxNews
