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An aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Thursday that attempts to bring back those forcibly deported to Russia will be another frontline battle.
“This is a difficult process that will require intermediary countries or international institutions that will enable us to bring people back. I would like to point out that this will also be a war,” said Mykhailo Podolyak. “After the war there will be a war to take back our people.”
FILE – Marianna Vishegirskaya stands outside a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022, which was damaged by shelling. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov, File)
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Countless reports have circulated in the eight weeks since the Russian invasion began that Ukrainian citizens were being taken to Russia against their will.
Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova, who investigates allegations of human rights abuses, reported Thursday on Telegram that a group of teenagers from eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions were forcibly deported to Russia after their parents were killed in the war.
Denisova also reported last week that 400 Ukrainians, including 145 children, were being held in a fenced-off camp near the Russian city of Penza, which was an ammunition depot for Soviet chemical bombs after World War II.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko also sounded the alarm earlier this month that some 31,000 residents of the partially besieged city had been deported at gunpoint to Russian “filtration camps”.
But the president’s adviser suggested on Thursday that the figure could actually be much higher, claiming 100,000 Donetsk residents had been deported.
A local resident looks at a damaged apartment building in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Saturday. (AP/Alexei Alexandrov)
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“They will not give us any objective information that, for example, of the 100,000 deportees from Mariupol, Volnovakha and other regions of the Donetsk region, only five percent wanted to go to Russia, and the rest were forcibly deported there,” he said in a statement issued by the Ukrainian government translated address.
Podolyak claimed that Russia has a history of “relocating” citizens from nations it invades to try to “separate them from their homes.”
The adviser warned Russia that these people immigrated voluntarily.
“Propaganda-wise, the Russians will lie to the whole world,” he added.
Podolyak said legally verified lists must be drawn up to identify every person who was deported to Russia.
Ukrainian soldiers ride on an armored fighting vehicle Tuesday as Russia’s assault on Ukraine continues at an undisclosed location in eastern Ukraine. (Press service of the Ukrainian Ground Forces/Handout via REUTERS)
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The adviser said there must be an international effort to bring those deported back safely, with representatives of international organizations meeting with each individual.
“This is a legal process for us to take them back,” he added.