Refugees tell of being forced to strip or witnessing beatings as they seek to enter Russia
Unable to flee Russian-occupied cities such as Mariupol and Kherson westward into Ukrainian-held territory, many Ukrainians are left with a terrible dilemma: stay in your besieged city, or flee to the country that has destroyed your home.
Filtration camps have been set up across towns and villages mostly concentrated in the DNR, including Novoazovsk, Mangush, Bezimenne and Nikolske. Ukrainians fleeing Mariupol by bus often arrive at the filtration camps unknowingly, having been told they would be taken to Ukrainian-held cities instead. After arrival, they are usually not allowed to leave the town.
For Maksym and Iulia, from Mariupol, filtration was also a lengthy ordeal, though they were lucky to have been offered a house to stay in nearby that belonged to one of Maksym’s classmates. They spent almost a month waiting to be filtered in Mangush. “Our number in the queue was 347,” Maksym says. “You go in and ask what the number is today, and you realise the number only went down by two or three. Why was it so slow? The process itself takes around 30 minutes.
With only migration cards, not filtration papers, Zhanna and her family travelled by bus from Novoazovsk to Russia’s Taganrog. From Taganrog, they travelled by train to Vladikavkaz, and crossed into Georgia in a minivan through the border at Kazbegi.Others say that informing officers of concrete plans to go to a specific Russian city was enough for them to be allowed to make their own way to Russia, and then onwards to Georgia.
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