Footage and photos released over the weekend show people arriving by bus in the Russian-controlled city of Bezimenne – about 16 miles east of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol – accompanied by Russian Z-tanks and the United Nations (UN). ) vehicles. In the images, published by Reuters on Sunday, women, children and the elderly get off buses in an area with white tents. Some people get stuck in their bags with their belongings. One holds a carrier cat. Soldiers with insignificant fatigue, carrying rifles, patrol the area. A woman, an employee at the huge Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, said she spent weeks hiding in the labyrinth of Soviet-era warehouses under the facility – the latter remaining shelter in the war-torn city. He said he had earlier tried to escape from Mariupol to the evacuation corridors, but was unable to leave due to relentless bombing. An employee of the Azovstal steelworks evacuated from Mariupol arrives in the Russian-controlled village of Bezimenne on May 1st. (Alexander Ermochenko / Reuters) “The bombardment was so strong that it kept hitting us. At the exit of the bomb shelter, on the top few steps, one could not breathe, as there was not enough oxygen. I was even afraid to go out and breathe fresh air,” he said. employee. I can not believe it. Two months of darkness. When we were at [evacuation] bus I told my husband “Basia, should not we go to the bathroom with a flashlight? And not to use a bag, bucket [as a toilet] with a flashlight “, he added. “We did not see any sunlight. “We were scared.” At the weekend, both Ukrainian and Russian officials said dozens of civilians had been evacuated from the plant and the surrounding area by the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that about 100 people had been rescued from Azovstal and headed to Zaporizhzhia and that there were hopes that more could leave on Monday. The Russian Defense Ministry said 46 people had left the Azovstal complex on Saturday and that 80 civilians had been “rescued” from the works on Sunday before being transferred to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). The ministry said some of these people had “voluntarily decided to stay in the DRC”, which has been controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. While the ministry claimed that the civilians evacuated from Azovstal who wanted to leave for Ukrainian-controlled areas were “handed over to UN and ICRC representatives”, it is unclear whether everyone was given the choice of where to go next. . A CNN poll in April revealed that Russian forces and allied separatist soldiers had taken Mariupol residents to a so-called “filtering center” set up in Bezimenne, where they were recorded before being sent to Russia – many against their will. Ukrainian government and local officials in Mariupol say tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been forcibly deported to the Donetsk People’s Republic and Russia since the start of the war. In April, CNN interviewed 10 people, including Mariupol locals and their loved ones, who were led by Russian soldiers and GDR soldiers to Russian-controlled cities against their will before being deported to the Russian Federation. CNN spoke to two people who were taken to Bezimenne before being sent to Russia. They described a huge military scene, where Russian soldiers and GDR soldiers were processing hundreds of people – taking fingerprints, photographing them, searching their phones, questioning them, examining passports and registering them in databases. Maxar satellite images show a tent camp in Bezimenne on March 22. Satellite images from Maxar Technologies examined by CNN show a tent camp in Bezimenne. According to Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko, it is one of the four “filtering camps” that the GDR and Russia operate around the city. “We have the official statistics that we have verified with the community register – more than 40,000 locals who went through the filtering and were found either in the so-called DPR or in the Russian Federation,” Boichenko said on April 25. “Some residents of Mariupol managed to get to controlled Ukrainian territories now and testify about the whole process.” The day before, in his night speech, Zelensky said that the government continues to monitor Russia’s “so-called filter camps” near Mariupol. “The events of the deportation of our citizens to the Russian hinterland, to Siberia, and even to Vladivostok have been recorded,” he said. “The children are also being deported. They hope the children will forget where their home is, but they are from Ukraine.” The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from expelling or transporting civilians. Ukraine’s attorney general and international human rights watchdogs have said that forcibly removing civilians from Russia could be tantamount to a war crime. Moscow continues to claim that it is evacuating civilians from dangerous areas of Ukraine. Russian General Mikhail Mizinchev said on Saturday that more than 1 million Ukrainians, including nearly 200,000 children, have been evacuated to Russia so far, according to TASS. Read CNN’s research on deportations to Russia here:
