On average 7-10 thousand Ukrainians are forcibly deported to Russia every day, – Mikhail Savva

The Russian occupation authorities deport 7-10,000 people from Ukraine on average to Russia every day. This was reported by a member of the Expert Council of the Center for Civil Liberties, human rights activist Mikhail Savva during an expert discussion on Solidarity Talks at the Kyiv School of Human Rights and Democracy.

“Since the beginning of the war, about 1.3 million people have been deported to Russia, according to the Russian side information. Russian authorities call it an evacuation from dangerous areas. However, there is no exact data on how many Ukrainians were displaced without their consent”, he said.

Mikhail Savva cited the data of the chairman of the Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy of the Parlament of Ukraine Mykyta Poturayev, who reported about 500,000 such IDPs to Russia in April.

The human rights activist also reminded us that the Geneva Conventions of 1949 prohibit the mass forcible transfers of civilians during the conflict to the territory of the occupying power.

“Such movement of people qualifies as a war crime. However, the Russian authorities deny the violent nature of the people’s transfer”, he added.

Should be added that at least 200,000 of these IDPs have Russian passports. These are residents of the territories of Ukraine occupied since 2014.

“Many Ukrainians are in Russia because they have not been able to enter the territory controlled by the Ukrainian authorities. The Russian military has not opened humanitarian corridors in this direction”, the human rights activist said.

The issues of illegal filtration camps set up by the Russians in the occupied territories of Ukraine were also discussed during the talk. There is already recorded information that people who do not “pass filtration” are placed in Russian pre-trial detention centres, as well as various places of detention in the occupied territory of Ukraine, where they are detained and used to obtain evidence of “crimes of Ukrainian authorities against Donbas residents”.

In addition, the main purpose of the Solidarity Talks expert discussions is to find common algorithms for the actions of human rights defenders from different countries, in particular, the formats of joint actions to help Ukrainians who were placed in Russia during the war.