Ukrainians have been “sent against their will to Russia,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Monday, confirming reports from Ukrainian authorities.
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“We don’t have numbers, but we have seen signs of Ukrainians being taken from Ukraine to Russia,” Kirby said when asked during a press briefing about Ukrainian government claims that 1.2 million people were thus deported to Russia and placed in camps.
“I don’t know how many camps there are or what they look like,” the spokesperson added. “But we do have information that Ukrainians are being sent against their will to Russia.”
Russia’s behavior is “unacceptable” and “is not that of a responsible power”, added Mr. Kirby, believing that Russian President Vladimir Putin “simply does not accept and respect the sovereignty of the ‘Ukraine’.
According to a Ukrainian government official, Lyudmila Denisova, quoted by the official communication center Spravdi, “more than 1.19 million of our citizens, including more than 200,000 children, have been deported to the Russian Federation”.
Abstaining from describing these deportations as ethnic cleansing, he nevertheless referred to the “Russian brutality” in this conflict.
“For 75 days (Russia) has brutalized Ukraine and the Ukrainian people,” he said. “And every time you think they can’t go any lower, they prove you wrong. »