Some Ukrainian families who refuse Russian passports are evicted and their homes given to Putin's soldiers, says Ukraine military
- Ukrainians living under occupation who refuse a Russian passport are being evicted, an army report said.
- "The occupiers are not even deterred by minor children that may live in the apartment," it said.
Some Ukrainian citizens in the occupied city of Starobilsk who refuse to take a Russian passport are being forced out of their homes and into so-called "filtration camps," the Ukrainian military has said.
In a statement on Facebook, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said that Russian soldiers are given Ukrainian homes to live in Starobilsk, in the Luhansk region, after the occupants are evicted.
If Ukrainian citizens refuse a Russian passport twice, "on the third time, people and their belongings are forcibly thrown out into the street," the statement said.
"The occupiers are not even deterred by minor children that may live in the apartment," it said.
Michael Carpenter, US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said last year that the "filtration camps" are being used by Russian troops to interrogate Ukrainian civilians for any government or military ties.
"Ukrainian citizens are being taken to filtration camps in a concerted effort to suppress their resistance. Many Ukrainian citizens are facing forced deportations, arbitrary detentions, and torture and other abuses," said a report by the State Department.
While at "filtration camps," Ukrainian citizens are often strip-searched for "nationalistic" tattoos, photographed, and have their fingerprints taken. They have had their passports confiscated and their cell phones searched, with Russia's forces sometimes downloading their contact lists, said the report.
One Ukrainian woman who had been sent to a camp inside Russia told Politico that she was fingerprinted, photographed, and asked to hand over personal information, and all the data was transferred from their cell phones.
Agents from Russia's FSB intelligence agency interrogated the detained civilians in an apparent bid to establish if they had ties to the Ukrainian military or government, she said, in one of the first accounts of the workings of a Russian "filtration camp," a year ago.
Those who gave answers the interrogators didn't like were taken away, presumably to another detention center, the woman said.