More than a million Ukrainians, including 200,000 children, have already been deported to Russia since the beginning of the war. Kyiv accuses Moscow of forced deportations, Russia says it is only carrying out voluntary evacuations. However, the refugees must pass through a filtration camp. As Rossiyskaya Gazeta writes, the idea is to prevent "Ukrainian nationalists from penetrating into Russia".

The conditions in the camps are described by witnesses who have undergone filtration and managed to get out of Russia. Western media publish satellite images, and on 5 May footage captured with a hidden camera emerged. Three short videos were shown on Telegram by an advisor to the mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andriushchenko. Four days earlier, the Russian defence ministry had reported that "rescued" residents of the city had been evacuated to a camp in the village of Bezimienna - this is where the footage came from.

One cold water tap

The camps were set up on the grounds of a school complex in Bezimienna and a club in the village of Cossack in the Novoazovsk region on the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic. About 2,000 men from Mariupol have been detained there for a month. They have not been allowed to take any personal belongings, their passports have been confiscated. They leave the camp only when accompanied by soldiers, forced to work or to clear the ruins. It was them that Russia wanted to use for its victory celebrations on 9 May in Mariupol. Dressed in the uniforms of Ukrainian soldiers, they were to take part in a "prisoner of war parade".

Prisoner drill reigns in the camp. In the morning and at 9 p.m., prisoners are inspected, and three times a day they receive 'lean broth'. Sanitary conditions are tragic. One man commented hotly: "the stench is overpowering", "there is one cold water tap for 350 people. It is impossible to take care of hygiene, to get to the toilet, basic needs are simply taken care of outside.

Until recently, the men slept in the corridors, but only with time did the camp authorities allow them to move into the classrooms. There are mattresses on the floors and joined benches. The gymnasium has been turned into an isolation room, because one of the inmates has advanced tuberculosis - people are not given help, they are easier to isolate. As the mayor's advisor reported, in the neighbouring camp in the village of Kozackie, one of the men died because "the occupants refused to call an ambulance".