ZMINA collects information in Baltic states about Ukrainians deported to Russia’s territory
On February 11-18, Human Rights Centre ZMINA representatives visited Estonia and Latvia on a field mission to document the facts of the deportation of Ukrainians by Russia. As part of the project on documenting deportation cases, the field mission participants visited Tallinn, Tartu, Rapla, Narva, and Riga. They documented five deportation cases in Estonia and three in Latvia. The deported people were from Mariupol.
Estonia–Russia border crossing point in Narva, through which the largest number of deported Ukrainians entered the EU from spring to autumn 2022As it became clear during interviews with deportation witnesses and victims, the Russians, in particular, pursue the practice of deportation under the guise of evacuation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. To do this, they create dangerous and unbearable living conditions in these territories – lack of communication and electricity, intimidation and shelling – and at the same time prevent people from going to Ukraine-controlled territory.
Yevhen, a resident of Mariupol, said that he had wanted to leave for Ukraine-controlled territory together with his mother and friends but ended up in Russia:
“Somewhere in mid-March, people began telling each other (there was no mobile communication then) that there would be an evacuation to Ukraine-controlled territory near the Port City shopping mall. On the way, we met a Russian soldier who told us that we should go from the Port City to a checkpoint. There we were examined and sent either to a service station or to a filling station, I don’t remember. And there the Russian military put us on minibuses and said that they would take us to Zaporizhzhia. But we ended up in Taganrog.”
The mission participants also held several advocacy meetings with volunteers and representatives of organizations that help Ukrainians leave Russia.
Vira Konyk, Head of the Congress of Ukrainians of Estonia, said that a lot of Ukrainians had started arriving in Estonia from Russia since April. And these are precisely the people whom the Russians took, i.e., deported to the Russian Federation.
Віра Коник (перша ліворуч) та учасники місіїYevgenia Chirikova, a volunteer from Tallinn, told about a family from Mariupol: a husband, a pregnant woman, and a 3-year-old child. As part of the “evacuation”, they were sent to a suburb of Nakhodka called Vrangel – an island in the Far East. She also told about a woman taking out on her own her diabetic son and husband who had not been given medical care in the occupied territory. The husband had to have surgery, and the son had already lost his foot.
Human Rights Centre ZMINA, together with Ukrainian and international partners, documents cases of forced deportation to the territory of the Russian Federation and Belarus committed during the Russian armed aggression against Ukraine.
If you have become a victim or a witness of forced deportation to the territory of the Russian Federation or Belarus, leave information about yourself in online form or write to iy@humanrights.org.ua.
With the consent of an applicant, the received information will be used for appeals to national and international investigative bodies, in particular the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, the International Criminal Court, etc., for the investigation into war crimes committed in Ukraine.
