The Washington Post :Video shows Russian ‘filtration camp,’ Mariupol mayor’s office says

© Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters Service members of pro-Russian troops stand guard near a temporary accommodation centre for evacuees during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the village of Bezimenne in the Donetsk Region, Ukraine May 1, 2022.

Men forcibly taken from Mariupol “were placed in the school in Bezimenne village,” according to the accompanying Telegram post, and denied medical assistance. Russian soldiers frequently threaten the detainees with torture and executions, it continued.

In the video, people sleep in classrooms on top of desks. In a gym, three rows of sleeping pads are arranged on the floor. An off-camera voice, walking down a hallway, describes the stench. “A single sink for the whole crowd,” he says. “The toilet, where you can’t step in because it hurts the eyes there, is outside.”

In a different clip, the man filming the video walks into an area he describes as a foyer where the “sick and disabled” are housed in a “sanitary unit.” A person had recently contracted tuberculosis and was placed in isolation, he added, but did not provide more details or evidence.

The Washington Post was unable to independently verify these claims, but satellite imagery from late March showed the rapid construction of temporary camps in Bezimenne, just a few blocks north of the school.

Ukrainian officials in March started accusing Russia of forcing civilians out of Mariupol, The Post reported at the time. Russian authorities claimed they had set up temporary camps for Ukrainians displaced by the fighting in Mariupol. They released videos claiming to show their humanitarian activities and interviews with alleged Mariupol residents.

Additionally, planned evacuation routes from Mariupol released by the Russian Defense Ministry on a regular basis since March 7 took residents east through territory controlled by separatists to Rostov-on-Don in Russia. The 100-mile journey followed a highway parallel to the Sea of Azov’s coast, passing by Bezimenne.

As recently as May 1, the Defense Ministry announced in its Telegram channel that “rescued” Mariupol residents had been evacuated to Bezimenne.

A young Ukrainian woman told The Post in late March that pro-Russian soldiers forced her and other Mariupol residents to go to a filtration camp. She described men in uniforms calling up civilians one at a time to photograph and fingerprint them before ordering them to turn over their phones and passwords. Then, she said, they were interrogated.

The woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns about a relative in Russia, said she and others were later bused out of her hometown to another filtration camp near Novoazovsk, a town near the Russian border that is less than an hour’s drive from Mariupol in peacetime, she said. Soldiers there questioned her about whether she had relatives in the Ukrainian military and her thoughts about Mariupol authorities.

“Then they add you to three different databases and take you further, but they don’t tell you where exactly they are leading you,” she recounted.

“At every stage of the way, they tell you that you have to be grateful that you are given a sandwich or evacuated somewhere else, that you have been liberated,” she told The Post, adding, “Liberated from what?”

Arkady Dolina contributed to this report.

Video shows Russian ‘filtration camp,’ Mariupol mayor’s office says (msn.com)