People who remain in the occupied zones face unspeakable abuse. In cities and villages that peacefully resist the occupying forces, the invaders resort to looting and violence against civilians. Crimes of a sexual nature are prelevant. The occupiers are torturing children, underage girls and women, as women who managed to escape from the occupied territories report. Russian troops kidnap activists, journalists and representatives of local government in Kherson, Berdyansk and Melitopol. Crimean Tatars who live in Crimea under Russian occupation are conscripted into the Russian army to fight in Ukraine.
The estimated number of Ukrainians who have been forcibly deported to Russia and Belarus as a result of Russian military aggression is 400,000 people. This includes the first 90,000 who were taken from Donetsk and Luhansk regions on February 18, as Russia was preparing for a full-scale invasion. Ukrainians are taken to the so-called filtration camps in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and later sent to the Russian Taganrog, Omsk, Tomsk, Perm, different regions of Siberia, Sakhalin and other economically depressed regions of Russia. The deported are recorded on video by the FSS and are made to tell propaganda-ready stories about the atrocities of the Ukrainian army. They are threatened, their privacy is violated.
Deportation and forcible transfer of population are explicitly outlawed as a war crime under the Rome Statute. Nevertheless, the Russian Red Cross (RRC) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) office in Moscow are involved in this illegal activity. The RRC assisted in the forced deportation of at least 60,000 of Ukrainians. The UNHCR failed to address the essentially violent nature of deportations and praised the efforts of RRC in creating accommodation centers and providing relief for displaced individuals in Kursk, Belgorod, Volgograd, and Lipetsk. The international community must condemn the UNHCR’s poor judgement and the criminal mismanagement in the Red Cross system.
Speakers:
- Refat Chubarov, Head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people
- Aleksander Miszalski, Polish MP, Civic Platform
- Iurii Larin, journalist from Kharkiv
- Vitalii Holod, journalist from Tokmak, Zaporizhzhia Oblast
- Pavlo Ieshtokin, journalist from Volnovakha, Donetsk oblast
- Anastasia Volkova, journalist from Severodonetsk, Luhansk Oblast
- Mykyta Petrovets, lawyer of Regional Center for Human Rights.
Euromaidan SOS Appeal regarding illegal movement of Ukrainian citizens from Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities to Russia.
UKRAINE IN FLAMES project is created by Ukraine Crisis Media Center, Ukrainian Catholic University’s analitical center and NGO “Euroatlantic Course”. We are aiming at searching a loud support for Ukraine in the war started by Russia on the 24th of February 2022.
If you want to support Ukraine against Russian aggression, check the link with recommendations by Ukraine Crisis Media Center – https://uacrisis.org/en/help-ukraine.
NGO Euroatlantic Course collects donations to support Ukrainian Army and civilians – https://eac.org.ua/en/main-page/.