Putin Accused of Mass Abductions and Forced Deportations of Civilians in Ukraine

Following the Russian bombing of an art school in Mariupol, where about 400 people had been taking refuge from Russian airstrikes, President Vladimir Putin and his forces are now being accused of abducting about 2,500 Ukrainian children from Donetsk and Luhansk and deporting them to Russia as refugees.

Mariupol is hit by two 'super powerful bombs' as Ukrainian authorities try to rescue civilians https://t.co/vkyVan23sl pic.twitter.com/FpTSM1GAxJ

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) March 22, 2022

The bombings in Mariupol, which had been under siege since the beginning of the invasion, had been continuous as it had also targeted a local drama theater that had an estimate of 1,300 Ukrainians inside. Furthermore, the Russian forces also bombed a maternity hospital last week, which Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova defended by asserting that there were Ukrainian forces within the hospital.

They had also allegedly taken the largest hospital in Mariupol hostage, rounding up civilians from the nearby houses and putting them into said hospital. Reports indicated that the Russians had threatened to shoot those who tried to escape. However, these claims could not be independently verified.

After the bombings, the Russian forces had forcibly rounded up thousands of residents in Mariupol and sent them on their way to remote cities in Russia. Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner Lyudmyla Denisova claimed that these Ukrainians were “kidnapped” and transported to Taganrog, the closest Russian city from Mariupol, about 60 miles away. She also stated that Ukrainians were also transported by train to “economically depressive Russian cities.”

“Our citizens were given documents that oblige them to stay in a particular town, meaning they have no right to leave it for at least two years and they have to seek employment there,” she told journalists over at Ukraine’s Channel 24. She also admitted that they did not know what had happened to the other Ukrainians who were forcibly deported, leaving them at the hands of their Russian captors.

Mariupol’s very own mayor Vadym Boichenko compared the forced deportations to World War II atrocities where the Nazis forcibly took civilians from occupied countries and sent them to work in armaments factories or to labor camps.

“What the occupiers are doing today is familiar to the older generation, who saw the horrific events of World War II, when the Nazis forcibly captured people. It is hard to imagine that in the 21st-century, people can be forcibly taken to another country,” said Boichenko through Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun.

While there is no evidence to suggest that they were off to be killed, Denisova did say that captured Ukrainian civilians had no right to leave the Russian towns and had to seek employment there as per the Russian documents presented to them, which does imply forced labor. However, it is unknown whether the captured Ukrainians would be paid wages or not. Furthermore, it is important to remember the conditional offer the Russians made of humanitarian corridors out of Mariupol as long as the evacuation routes were into Russia.