Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Russians’ forcible detention or deportation of roughly a million Ukrainians since Russia’s invasion began is a war crime.
The Biden administration’s top diplomat urged Russia to “immediately halt its systematic ‘filtration’ operations and forced deportations in Russian-controlled and held areas of Ukraine” in a Wednesday statement ahead of the Ukraine Accountability Conference.
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Russia has interrogated, detained, or deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens, roughly a quarter of a million of whom are children, since the war began more than four months ago, Blinken said, attributing the data to “a variety of sources, including the Russian government.”
“Eyewitnesses and survivors of ‘filtration’ operations, detentions, and forced deportations report frequent threats, harassment, and incidents of torture by Russian security forces,” Blinken continued. “During this process, Russian authorities also reportedly capture and store biometric and personal data, subject civilians to invasive searches and interrogations and coerce Ukrainian citizens into signing agreements to stay in Russia, hindering their ability to freely return home.”
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Russian authorities could be “deliberately separating” Ukrainian children and parents and targeting orphanages to take those children to Russia and put them up for adoption there, he added, also claiming that there is mounting evidence that Russia is “detaining or disappearing thousands of Ukrainian civilians who do not pass ‘filtration.’”
The Russians’ behavior appears to be “premeditated,” and there are similarities to Russian “filtration” operations in Chechnya.
