Russian filtration camps for Ukrainians
According to the occupation plans, large portions of the Ukrainian populations were to be rounded up during door-to-door sweeps and passed through "filtration" in order to compile comprehensive counter-intelligence files: "Filtration would be used to intimidate people, to determine whether they needed to be displaced into Russia, and to lay the groundwork for records to monitor and disrupt resistance networks.
"[19] As of June 2022, most filtration camps were attested to be located in towns and villages across the puppet quasi-state Donetsk People's Republic.
[9][10] Those detained in the camps described sleeping on the floors or on cardboard,[9] living in poor sanitary conditions,[10] and meal rations that were scant or altogether absent.
[11] One witness said filtration camp staff forced detainees to give false testimony (blame Ukraine for destroying their homes) on camera.
[10][31] According to the U.S. State Department, Ukrainian citizens are coerced to sign agreements to stay in Russia prior to their release from filtration camps, thereby hindering their return to Ukraine.
[33] According to the U.S. State Department, "between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens, including 260,000 children" have passed through the "filtration" process and deported, "often to isolated regions in the Far East" in a "pre-meditated [...] apparent effort to change the demographic makeup of parts of Ukraine".
[30][better source needed] Russia has enacted measures to facilitate the process of granting temporary asylum and Russian citizenship to Ukrainians.
In April 2022, Russia adopted federal legislation which includes provisions streamlining applications for Russian citizenship for Russian-speaking Ukrainians from Donbas.
On March 5, 2022, Putin signed a decree to help civilians fleeing hostilities that established a simplified administrative procedures for Ukrainians entering Russia and seeking asylum or citizenship.
[10] Ukrainians that have fled into Georgia have avoided forced deportations into Russian cities that are reportedly common after passing "filtration".
[9] Some people reported that they needed to slip out of filtration camps in Novoazovsk or post-filtering from Taganrog or Rostov-on-Don to escape through neighboring countries like Georgia, rather than be forcibly sent to distant parts of Russia.
[9] On 15 March 2022, The Guardian reported that witnesses have said that Russian troops have ordered women and children out of a bomb shelter in Mariupol.
One witness said they were forcibly bussed with two or three hundred others to Novoazovsk, where they had to wait for hours inside the buses until they were ordered to go through a group of tents to what was called a filtration camp.
[34][35][36] In November 2022, the Head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, reported on the "admission procedures" in the penal colony near Olenivka, which often involved beatings, threats, dog attacks, mock executions, forced nudity, electric and positional torture.
[37] In December 2022, OHCHR reported that Russian security services may have forcibly disappeared a woman who had failed the "filtration process" in the Rostov region on 10 October.
[38] The Russian Embassy in the United States has said the filtration camps are "checkpoints for civilians leaving the zone of active hostilities".
[6] In an interview to Current Time TV, human rights activist Pavel Lisyansky said that the "courses" are often accompanied by physical violence, moral pressure and humiliation, and compared them to the "re-education" of Uyghurs by the Chinese government, which likely inspired these filtration camps and methods.
