Is Russia committing genocide in Ukraine?

Russia is forcibly abducting civilians in the besieged city of Mariupol and transporting them across the border to “filtration camps”, Ukrainian politicians have claimed.

Civilians in the southeastern city, which has been subjected to a relentless aerial bombardment in recent weeks, are having their documents and phones checked by invading troops before being put on trains “to distant parts of Russia to work for free”, Inna Sovsun told Times Radio. “This is the logic of Nazi Germany,” she said.

Coming just days after Russia destroyed a theatre sheltering children from the bombing campaign, the claim has added weight to the allegation that Moscow is committing “war crimes and genocide” as fighting in Mariupol “reached a new intensity”, The Times said.

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Deportation campaign

Justifying the invasion, Vladimir Putin baselessly claimed that Ukraine was committing a genocide of its own against Russian speakers in the separatist-controlled areas of Ukraine in Donetsk and Luhansk. But while the Kremlin was unable to produce evidence to back up the allegation, testimony detailing Russian war crimes is mounting up.

Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, yesterday told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “It’s really important that all political leaders around the world stay united and establish the anti-war coalition. Only this joint effort will allow us to prevent this massive genocide and murdering in the 21st century.”

Asked by Ridge whether she felt a genocide against Ukrainians was already underway, Stefanishyna replied: “I absolutely believe it. I am a lawyer myself and I commit myself to implementation of the decision.”

Adding that she knew of “women who have been raped for hours and then murdered”, she said: “Ukraine will resist as long as it needed to make sure that no terror, no mass murdering, no genocide is committed on this land in the 21st century.”

Her warning came as Sovsun told Times Radio that Russian troops are “taking Ukrainian citizens” and “sending them through what are called filtration camps”. She added that civilians “are being forced to sign papers [saying] that they will stay in that area for two or three years and they will work for free in those areas”.

Asked whether she was describing a system in which Ukrainians are forced into “slave labour”, the deputy leader of the pro-European Holos party replied: “It is, yes.”

Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman, has also warned of crimes against humanity after the authorities said a Russian tank fired on a home for the elderly, killing 56 people.

Warning that 15 survivors had been taken away by Russian troops and deported across the border, she wrote in a social media post: “Today it became known about another terrible crime against humanity committed by the racist occupation force. It is still impossible to get to the site of the tragedy to bury the dead old people.”

‘Terror that will be remembered’

As claims mount of forced deportations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, told CNN: “I’ve only heard it, I can’t confirm it, but I can say it is disturbing. It is unconscionable for Russia to force Ukrainian citizens into Russia and put them in what will basically be concentration and prisoner camps.

“This is something that we need to verify. Russia should not be moving Ukrainian citizens against their will into Russia.”

According to The Telegraph, Russian state media has confirmed the transportation of at least 480 Ukrainians, claiming they “were being rescued” and broadcasting images of “them thanking Russian forces for their liberation”.

In a move that sees Russians “borrow from Nazi playbook”, the paper said the civilians were seen “clutching bags of possessions, dazed children and confused pets”, having disembarked from a train “hundreds of miles away, in the Russian city of Yaroslavl, north of Moscow”.

In a statement, Vadym Boichenko, Mariupol’s mayor, said: “What the occupiers are doing today is familiar to the older generation, who saw the horrific events of World War Two, when the Nazis forcibly captured people. It is hard to imagine that in the 21st century, people can be forcibly taken to another country.”

A local official told The Telegraph that Russia is “sending the residents of Mariupol to filtration camps, checking their phones and seizing their Ukrainian documents”.

The warnings came as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the siege of the port city Mariupol as “a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come”.

‘Starve into surrendering’

Rescuers are searching “the rubble of a school that was bombed by Russian forces while fighting reached the city centre”, The Times said. “The school is believed to have been sheltering about 400 people”, but “it is not known how many were killed or injured”.

As the targeting of civilians in Mariupol becomes more intense, “a Ukrainian MP has accused Russia of trying to starve” the city “into surrendering”, the BBC reported. Dmytro Gurin told the broadcaster that Russia is refusing to “open humanitarian corridors” and will not let “humanitarian convoys enter the city”.

“We clearly see now that the goal of the Russians is to start to [create] hunger [in the city] to enforce their position in the diplomatic process and if the city does not surrender, and the city will not surrender, they won’t let people out,” he warned.

His comment came after the city rejected a Russian deadline demanding its “defenders lay down their arms in exchange for safe passage out of the city”, the BBC said.