Ukraine accuses Russian troops of forcefully recruiting residents of occupied territories. In addition to young people, doctors in the regions of Cherson, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv are also particularly affected, Ukrainian military intelligence wrote on Facebook on Saturday. For example, medical personnel in the city of Vovchansk in the Kharkiv region were forced to treat Russian soldiers at the front under threat of death.
The information could not be independently verified. In the Zaporizhia region, Russian military and secret service agents were looking for people of draft age, military intelligence continued. They say they must reinforce Russian units.
The British Defense Ministry emphasized in its update on the situation in Ukraine on Saturday that any recruitment of residents of occupied territories violates the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians in Time of War.
deportations
Ukraine also accuses Russian authorities of deporting people from occupied territories into Russia. For example, 308 Ukrainians were taken by train from the long-beaten port city of Mariupol to the Russian Far East town of Nakhodka, 8,000 kilometers away, Lyudmyla Denisova, human rights commissioner in the Ukrainian parliament, wrote on Saturday. Telegram online service. They are expected to obtain Russian identity documents and look for work.
Ukraine had already repeatedly criticized the fact that Russian troops only allowed exit to Russia in some escape corridors from embattled cities. Russia denies that people are being brought into the country against their will.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy specifically criticized the filtering fields created by the Russian military, in which, according to the official statement, would-be combatants must be separated from civilians. “The honest name for it is different – it’s concentration camps, like the ones the Nazis built at the time,” Zelenskyy said in his daily video speech. He criticized the fact that Ukrainians from these camps were also being taken to Russia. “Among other things, they deport children in the hope that they will forget where they came from, where their home is.”