Ukrainians assure that the Kremlin forces use this system inherited from the Soviet era, intended to detain and interrogate civilians who try to flee combat zones.
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As if the Russian soldiers engaged, during this war in Ukraine, in a sort of sorting out between those they consider to be the good Ukrainians and the others. A few dozen people were able to get out of Mariupol and the Azovstal factory. But for more than 24 hours, these civilians who had until then been holed up in the basements of the industrial complex gave no news.
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They had to go through what the Russians call “filtration camps”. A system inherited from the Soviet era and already put in place by the Russians at the time of the war in Chechnya.
Those that are perceived as safe can pass. The others stay nights in the cold, sometimes naked. Anton thus had to wait 8 hours without sitting before an interrogation. “They search the phones, photos, calls to see if you have links with the Azov battalionexplains, Wednesday, May 4, this Ukrainian refugee. They don’t just look at tattoos. They scan your body to see if you have traces that prove that you fought or wielded weapons, like a bruise on your shoulder.”
Anton was able to leave this “filtration camp” without too much difficulty, mBut others less fortunate, because they were considered suspects, were taken to Donetsk. “Here, FSB guys are leading the interrogationswarns the deputy mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andryushneko. LPeople are put in solitary confinement. Looks like the camps of the Second World War. They are tortured, sometimes to death.”
“If they find a tattoo they don’t like, they scratch it bloody with a rock.”
Petro Andryushneko, deputy mayor of Mariupolat franceinfo
The elected official considers that these actions are not only intended to rid the country of its citizens. It is, according to him, to erase any nationalist feeling within the population.