Forced Deportations

We know people are trying to get out of combat zones. Some, the vast majority, are going West. A smaller group is either going into Russia or Belarus. We have reported that at least some of these people are now sent to the Far East.

The media is still using the term evacuation. I have no idea if this is laziness, or not understanding what is happening. The word evacuation is proper when you speak of wildfires. The expectation is that after some time, days, people will come home.

What the Russians are doing is non of the sort. They are transporting people to the Far East. They are taking people to internal exile, and camps.

Residents of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol are being taken to Russia against their will by Russian forces, the Mariupol City Council said Saturday.

”Over the past week, several thousand Mariupol residents have been taken to Russian territory,” the city said in a statement. “The occupiers illegally took people from the Livoberezhny district and from the shelter in the sports club building, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from the constant bombing.”

Captured Mariupol residents were taken to camps where Russian forces checked their phones and documents, then redirected some of the residents to remote cities in Russia, the statement said, adding that…