Putin's troops forcibly deported to Russia more than 600,000 Ukrainians

Russian troops “forcibly deported” more than 600,000 Ukrainians, including some 121,000 children, to Russia, said Ukraine's human rights commissioner Lyudmila Denysova.

In a statement posted on Facebook, the Human Rights Commissioner stated that residents of the temporarily occupied city of Izyum in the Kharkov region are being forcibly transferred to Russia.

“This is not the first time that Russian troops have used such tactics. After bringing the city into a critical situation, the enemy offers a conditional corridor to Russia, apparently to save people, leaving them no choice,” he explained.

Currently, Russian media reports that they have deported 615,000 people from Ukraine, including 121,000 children.

Many attempts to establish evacuation corridors have collapsed due to continued attacks.

According to CNN, instead of allowing safe passage outside the city, Russian and separatist troops are taking hundreds of thousands of civilians to so-called “filtration centers” in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic before moving them to Russia, as reported by the government of Ukraine, the watchdogs humanitarian and United States officials.

“Our citizens were deported from our territory to their territory. They were against their will, they were first forcibly taken to [a] filtration camp in the Donetsk region,” said Lyudmila Denysova in Brussels.

“After that, they took them to Russia by bus. Then they took them by train to different places, including depressed regions of the Russian federation, such as Sakhalin.”

He said that in more than a month of war, there has been no viable humanitarian corridor.

Ukraine said it aimed to establish up to 10 humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians trapped on Friday, but civilians attempting to flee the besieged Mariupol will have to use private vehicles.

The 10 planned safe corridors announced by Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk were all in the south and east of Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials say that Russian forces have been regrouping for a new offensive, and that Moscow plans to seize as much territory as possible in the eastern part of Ukraine known as Donbas, on the border with Russia.

Vereshchuk said 4,676 civilians had been evacuated from Ukrainian towns and cities on Thursday.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, multiple attempts have failed to agree on a safe passage for buses carrying supplies to Mariupol and take civilians out, and each side blames the other.

Mayor Vadym Boychenko estimated the number of civilians killed in the port city of the Sea of Azov at about 5,000 more than a week ago, and tens of thousands are still trapped without electricity and with little supplies.

(With information from Reuters)

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