According to the US State Department, more than a million Ukrainians have now been deported to Russia from regions controlled by Putin. Now the US ambassador to the OSCE has presented new shocking testimonies of Russian violence in Ukraine. There is talk of kidnapped children and the most brutal torture.
According to the US State Department, up to 1.6 million Ukrainians have been brought to Russia against their will since the start of the war of aggression in Ukraine. Estimates from various sources indicate that between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians, including 260,000 children, have been detained and forcibly taken from their homes to Russia. According to the ministry in Washington, people are said to have been deported to Russia primarily from eastern Ukraine.
The American Ambassador Michael Carpenter has now submitted new shocking witness reports of deportations to the Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). In addition to all the war crimes committed by Russia, the Russian Federation is working flat out to implement its policy of “social engineering” in the occupied territories. Putin’s “social engineering” is aimed at undermining Ukrainian national identity and instilling fear in Ukrainians, the ambassador said.
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But that’s not all: According to Carpenter, reports are mounting that the Russian armed forces are detaining civilians, forcibly disappearing them and using torture. Russia has turned the occupied territories into an “abyss of fear and rampant lawlessness,” says Human Rights Watch. Deportations are now the Kremlin’s new plan: “Moscow has apparently calculated that it must either bomb the area until nothing is left but dust, or that it must forcibly deport the residents through the so-called ‘filtration process’,” said the ambassador .
One of them is the Ukrainian Ihor Talalay: he volunteered to help residents of the occupied territories and was captured by Russian forces and tortured in a garage. They beat Talalay with a rifle butt and threatened to shoot him in the knees until he bled to death, Carpenter said. He was smuggled through several filtration camps until he ended up in an overcrowded cell in Olenivka. The Ukrainian watched prisoners collapse from the torture, Talalay tells the American ambassador.
The same happened to Maria Vdovychenko: Her filtration experience led to the death of her grandmother. The Russian kidnappers do not treat the Ukrainian prisoners as human beings, says Vdovychenko. In addition to torture and cells covered in blood, they threatened to cut off his father’s ears, Carpenter reports. Olha Tabachuk’s son, Vyacheslav Volyvach, disappeared in the Russian filtration camp in Olenivka. Not a minute goes by that she doesn’t think about her kidnapped son, she tells the American ambassador.
Of those arrested and released, survivors reported being beaten for hours and, in some cases, electrocuted, resulting in broken bones and teeth, severe burns, concussion, broken blood vessels in the eye, cuts and bruises, the ambassador explains. Other witnesses report how Russian authorities deliberately separate Ukrainian children from their parents in order to put them up for adoption in Russia. Reports of executions are also increasing, says the ambassador.
One victim of the Russian deportation told his interrogators that he was just a patriot of his country, Ukraine, to which they replied: “There is no such country.” The Ukrainian endured hours of horrific torture techniques: they beat and kicked him and forced him to remove his jeans to tape his legs together, clipped his earlobes and shocked him with electric batons just to ask him questions about Ukrainian protests, before threatening him with death, the ambassador said .
According to Carpenter, the Russian government has given up looking for local collaborators for its “social engineering” and is instead importing officials into the occupied territories. Russian officials are said to be purposefully denying Ukraine’s history and independence and suppressing the Ukrainian language and identity. Russian teachers would be paid almost six times the average monthly salary to move to Ukraine and teach a curriculum to Putin’s taste.
The Kremlin also lacks local government officials, which is why Russian agents are being placed at the top of the sham administrations in Kherson and Zaporizhia, Carpenter said. The ambassador ends his speech to the OSCE with powerful words to the Russian government: “Leave Ukraine. Disappears. Go back to Russia. Focus on rebuilding your own country and improving the lives of your own citizens. Stop lying and breaking your promises. The world – and also your children and grandchildren – will be better off than you.”