If they did not leave, they would die in the rubble, Russian soldiers warned. They said they did not have many options. Instead of allowing safe passage through the city, Russian and separatist troops are leading tens of thousands of civilians to so-called “filtering centers” in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine, which Moscow recognizes as independent. before transporting them to Russia, according to the Ukrainian government, the humanitarian guards and the American officials. Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereschuk has estimated that about 45,000 Ukrainian citizens have been forcibly deported since the start of the war. The Mariupol City Council said in a statement that Russia’s failure to agree on evacuation corridors and the creation of filtration centers was part of a broader effort to cover up possible war crimes committed in the city. “The occupiers are trying to locate all possible witnesses to the occupiers’ atrocities through filter camps and to destroy them,” the council said. CNN could not confirm this claim. This practice has evoked painful memories of the forced deportation of millions of people from their homelands by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, including more than 230,000 Crimean Tatars, to remote parts of the Soviet Union during World War II. Russian forces also used “filter camps” during the war in Chechnya in the 1990s, where human rights groups documented widespread violations, including torture, hostage-taking, and extrajudicial killings. “I do not need to specify what these so-called ‘filter camps’ are. They are creepy and we can not look away,” said US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield. He cited credible reports – including from the Mariupol City Council – of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents seizing passports and IDs, removing mobile phones and separating Ukrainian families. Few families in Mariupol have been left unscathed by the reign of terror in Russia. In a recent press conference, the mayor of Mariupol said that some of his neighbors and municipal colleagues were taken to Russia against their will. “A man with a gun enters at night and says it is an evacuation. People who have been in the shelter for about 20 days go out, put them in the car and send them somewhere. In the morning, they saw that this was not Ukraine,” Vadym said. Boychenko: “Then they put them on the trains and were already going inland of the Russian Federation.” Moscow has accused the allegations of lying, saying Ukraine has thwarted its efforts to “evacuate” people from Russia. Russian General Mikhail Mizinchev said more than 550,000 people had been evacuated from “dangerous areas of Ukraine” in Russia since the start of the war, including more than 121,000 people from Mariupol, according to the state-run Russian news agency TASS. But a CNN deportation survey reveals a very different reality, in which people had only two choices: Go to Russia or die. In interviews with 10 people, including locals in Mariupol and their loved ones, many describe Russian soldiers and GDR soldiers descending on bomb shelters and ordering those inside to leave immediately. Nobody knew where they were going. Some said that after weeks of uncertainty they did not care where they would end up – that anywhere would be safer than Mariupol, in their view. Five were eventually sent to Russia. three have since succeeded. They asked to be identified only by their first names or by pseudonyms for their protection. Everyone has shared details of their trip on CNN, including copies of Russian immigration cards they completed and stamped at the border. Those still in Russia trying to find a way back to their homeland are worried about their safety. These are some of their stories.

Andrey, 45

After weeks of heavy bombardment, the basement where Andrei was staying with his neighbors had begun to collapse. They had to leave, he thought, before the ceiling receded. Andrey, a 45-year-old sports coach, had repeatedly tried to escape from the left bank of the Kalmius River in Mariupol and take part in evacuation convoys leaving the city on the other side. But he could not – by car or on foot – navigate streets full of corpses and debris to cross the main bridge. CNN analyzed satellite images of the four bridges at Kalmius. everything was impassable or destroyed by March 22nd. On rare occasions when Andrey had a cell phone service, he called and texted his wife, Iryna, a 50-year-old English teacher living in a suburb of Kiev. He was desperate to find a safe passage through Mariupol so that the 15-year-old couple could be reunited. And yet there did not seem to be a way out. “There seemed to be no choice. Because of that, we already knew we would be appearing in either the DPR or the Russian Federation,” Andrei said. “There was a feeling that the left bank had just been abandoned.” Iryna shared their messages on WhatsApp and Telegram with CNN, revealing her terrifying attempts to help her husband. Each text was signed with the date and time so they can be sure when it was sent. In response, Andrey, disappointed, told her that he was not able to locate the evacuation convoys he mentioned, but would keep trying. On one last attempt, Iryna reached out to her mother in Russia, with whom she had stopped talking due to disagreements about the war. If Andrei had no other way out of Mariupol, he could stay with her, he asked her. Her mother said yes. “He did not want to go to Russia, he wanted to go home, he really wanted to go home. But in such a situation it was necessary for us to decide. Either go there and stay alive or stay in Mariupol and die from a bullet or under the rubble. “, he said. On March 17, a neighbor told Andrei that Russian troops had entered people’s homes and demanded that residents evacuate. The next day, he and his neighbors left their shelter and ran to a checkpoint near the sea. There, DPR soldiers told the men to undress to the waist and searched for “tattoos”, then checked their passports before transporting them by car to Bezimenne, a seaside town 16 miles east. “There seemed to be no choice. Because of that, we already knew we were going to appear in either the DPR or the Russian Federation … There was a feeling that the left bank had just been abandoned.” Andrey, 45 Andrei entered a school, where he said his passport and cell phone were checked again. he heard rumors of a tent camp nearby, but they did not take him there. School officials asked if he planned to stay in the DPR or go elsewhere. “Maybe there were only two acquaintances who wanted to go to Russia. But basically, everyone who wanted to leave wanted to leave for Ukraine,” he said. No one was given this choice. On March 21, Andrei said he was transferred to Dokuchaevsk, 65 miles north of the Donetsk region, to what he described as a “filtering center” where Ukrainians were treated. His fingerprints were taken, he was photographed, his phone was searched and his contacts were downloaded. Maxar satellite imagery showed white buses parked outside the Dokuchaevsk Culture and Leisure Center, where Andrey said he was registered. The “filtering center” in Dokuchaevsk was cited by, among other officials, the US Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Michael Carpenter. Two days later, Andrei said he was taken back south to Novoazovsk and then crossed the border into Russia, where he passed customs, where he was checked in his passport and stamped with an immigration card. Early on March 24, he was transported by bus to Taganrog, a Russian port city in the Sea of ​​Azov, where a refugee center was set up at an Olympic sports school. Andrei took a 10-hour train from Taganrog to Voronezh, where he now lives with his mother-in-law. He said that at the Taganrog railway station, he saw other Ukrainians who did not have money or documents being forcibly transported to Penza, more than 600 miles northeast, deep into Russian territory. Andrey is trying to figure out how to get back from Voronezh to Ukraine, possibly via Belarus. “Some people in Ukraine may think that those who left for Russia are traitors, but this is an exception to the rule. Most people understand that we went where we could go. But some do not understand that we had no choice – we had “Only one road, that was to Novoazovsk,” he said. “Some do not understand that we had no choice – we had only one road, that was to Novoazovsk.” Andrey, 45 Human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina, who heads a refugee organization in Moscow, told CNN she has received dozens of requests for help from Ukrainians like Andrey, who are now trapped in cities and towns across Russia. Many decided to stay with friends or relatives, with the largest number concentrated in the Rostov region, near Ukraine. Those who approached her told her that the choice to come to Russia was made for them. “These are people who are in the middle of two fires in a completely terrible situation,” Gannushkina said. “There is no question of free will here. They went where they could have gone at that time. And there was no other way but the way to Russia.”

Anna, 24

Anna lived in a shelter for two weeks, a shelter in a northern suburb of Mariupol with her family when soldiers invaded. “They came in and said, ‘It’s an order: Women and children must leave.’ “Some of those who asked to stay said no,” the 24-year-old translator told CNN. The men were dressed in military uniforms and carrying weapons, but said it was impossible to distinguish whether they were forces of the People’s Republic of Russia or Russia because they did not wear discreetly and did not identify themselves. All the women and children were forced to leave – about 90 in total, including her mother, her teenage brother, her grandmother, her aunt …