About 100 people from the outskirts of Mariupol were forcibly deported to Russia by the Russian military.
Natalia Yavorska told Graty about the forcible deportation. She was taken from Mariupol to Taganrog, Russia. However, unlike many, she managed to escape from Russia.
Natalia says that by March 15, Russian troops had occupied most of the village on the outskirts of Mariupol.
«They went from house to house. They came to our shelter. They said that everyone should go — to evacuate women and children. We asked if it was possible to stay. They said no. In a punishing tone. Apart from the shelter, we had nowhere to go. Several men with large families managed to leave,” Yavorska said.
She says that a woman died during the so-called «evacuation», her heart failed her.
«There were two thousand people in the village, there were a lot of us. There were about 90 people in our group. And they drove us several times. It was a forced evacuation, none of us wanted to leave Ukraine. If we had a choice, we would stay or go further into Ukraine,” explains Natalia Yavorska.
Also read: Occupied and then «rescued»: the story of a man who was taken to Belarus by the Russians and filmed on TV
On the way to Donetsk, everyone was put in the military «Ural». We were brought to one of the temporarily occupied villages. Then settled at the school.
«Most of us were treated either as criminals or as people in convoys, we didn’t even have the right to know where we were being taken. If asked, ‘Where are you taking us?’, They answered, ‘to a warm place’. ‘Their looks said we should be incredibly grateful that we were’ released ‘from our home’», she said.
Later they learned that the buses brought us to Novoazovsk.
«In Novoazovsk, the Russians have so-called filtration camps. It was quite scary, because there are a lot of military vehicles with images of Kadyrov, a lot of Kadyrovites,” says Natalia.
The filtration camp is a tent where a bunch of soldiers sit. The deported Ukrainians were sitting in buses, they went in turns.
«First you are photographed from all sides. Apparently, for the recognition system, which is now being implemented in Russia. Then fingerprints are taken, even the palms are scanned on all sides. Then you are interrogated for rehabilitation: you are asked which relatives stayed in Ukraine, whether you saw the movement of Ukrainian troops, how you feel about Ukrainian politics, how you feel about the government, how you feel about the «Right Sector», – says Yavorska.
Then the Russian military takes away phones and downloads contacts. Natalia says that they waited their turn for about 5-6 hours. There were no toilets in the buses, only in the trenches. We spent the night on the bus. In the morning they were taken to the border between the occupied Donetsk region and Russia.
In Russia, it all started with searches. Women and men were selectively interrogated. Natalia was interrogated by a Russian FSB officer. Then they were taken by bus to Taganrog. From there you could go to Vladimir. But Natalia, her mother, grandmother and brother got to Rostov.
«We went to Rostov and stayed overnight with relatives. This is also a crazy situation. They are very hospitable, but their brains are completely brainwashed by Russian propaganda. They say: don’t worry, you will return to Mariupol by autumn, everything will be cleaned up there, and everything will be fine. Rostov has a lot of Russian military equipment. The city lives as if in a war,” Yavorska said.
From Rostov – to Moscow, from there – to St. Petersburg. We stayed there for 3 days.
«On March 22, we left for the border. We prepared diligently – we cleaned everything in our phones. But to leave, though, oddly enough, was quite easy – only a formal interrogation about our relatives. For some reason, they asked for the phone’s IMEI again,» says Natalia Yavorska.
But not everyone managed to leave. Many people do not have passports, many were issued Russian SIM-cards. The internal certificate in the Russian Federation allows you to work, but with it you cannot leave Russia.
Also listen to: Deportation, famine and everything that Russia is doing in Mariupol — war crimes and crimes against humanity
The Russian occupiers are forcibly «evacuating» the residents of Mariupol to the territory of Russia or to the temporarily occupied territory of ORDLO. The captured Mariupol residents were taken to filtration camps. Some were redirected to remote cities in Russia. The Russians confiscated Ukrainian passports from Mariupol residents and issued papers obliging them to stay in a certain city without the right to leave for two years.
In total, Mariupol is trying to take 14,000 Russian troops – almost 10% of Russia’s invasive force. The city authorities refuse to surrender the city and side with Russia.
Mariupol is under blockade, 80-90% of the city is destroyed. The death toll has exceeded 2,300, but many people are still trapped, so the figure could be much higher. At the time of the blockade, between 350,000 and 400,000 residents remained in Mariupol.
On March 16, Russian occupation forces dropped a heavy bomb on the Mariupol Drama Theater. According to the military, almost a thousand civilians from Mariupol were hiding in the theater.
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