Ukrainian citizens told BBC Russian about the beatings and torture by Russian troops during their stay at the so-called “filtration camps” for Ukrainian refugees.
The Ukrainian nationals told BBC that Russian soldiers had seized their phones to check their social media pages. Andriy (his surname is not mentioned), a 28-year-old marketing specialist from Mariupol, said that the Russians had accused him of supporting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over him reposting the president’s address on social media. The man was beaten and forced to record a video saying “Glory to the Russian army!”.
The second man interviewed by BBC Russian, Dmytro, stated that the Russians checked his personal messages and saw him using the word “Rashist” (a person who supports the ideology of Rashism, or Russian fascism, a term used following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to describe the political ideology of the Russian government — translator’s note). The man was accused of spreading pro-Ukrainian propaganda and beaten.
Another Ukrainian national, steel-worker Maxim, said that he had been hit in the chest with a rifle stock and could barely breathe. Later, doctors discovered that he had broken four ribs.
Vadym, a 43-year-old resident of Mariupol, said that he was tortured with electric shocks by the servicemen of the self-proclaimed Donetsk “people’s republic” (“DPR”).
“I nearly died. I choked on my dental fillings just in time,”
the man said.
The torture only ended after Russian military officers got involved.
The first reports of filtration camps for Ukrainian residents started to appear in early March. The government of Mariupol, which was under siege at the time, reported that local residents trying to evacuate the city had to go through filtration camps in the cities of Bezimenne or Nikolske. The refugees were then sent to Russia.
