More than 400,000 Ukrainians including 84,000 children have been abducted and taken to Russian cities and may be used as 'hostages' to force a surrender, Kyiv warns
- 402,000 civilians including 84,000 children taken 'hostage' by Russia, Kyiv says
- Ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova says the citizens have been forcibly deported
- But Moscow denies this, saying people have volunteered to come to its territory
- Ukraine says some are sent through 'filtration camps' to wheedle out people with links to the military or emergency services, who are then sent to the far east
By ASSOCIATED PRESS and CHRIS PLEASANCE FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 15:22 AEDT, 24 March 2022 | UPDATED: 23:31 AEDT, 25 March 2022
Russia has abducted hundreds of thousands of civilians into its territory and could seek to use them as leverage in peace talks, Kyiv has claimed.
Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine's ombudsman, said 402,000 civilians - of which 84,000 are children - have been taken 'hostage' by Vladimir Putin's army.
Russia gives almost the exact same figure, but says the civilians have been 'relocated' to its territory after volunteering to go there.
Ukraine also says those sent to Russian travel via 'filtration camps' designed to wheedle out those with links to the armed forces or emergency services.
Russia has taken 400,000 Ukrainian citizens 'hostage' including 84,000 children since the start of its invasion, Ukraine says (pictured, a Russian soldier oversees and 'evacuation)
Moscow admits the figures are correct, but says the citizens came willingly to its territory from Ukraine (pictured, a Russian soldier oversees an 'evacuation')
Anyone with links to either service is then deported to the furthest reaches of Russia, predominantly to the island of Sakhalin which is just to the north of Japan, Kyiv says.
Officials claimed to have uncovered one such 'filtration camp' in the Donetsk region, though have not yet published images of it.
If confirmed, such tactics would mirror Russia's actions in Syria - where evacuees from the besieged city of Aleppo were often filtered to find those with links to rebel groups, who were deported or arbitrarily detained.
Russian forces, alongside those of Bashar al-Assad, were also accused of carrying out extrajudicial killings of evacuees.
Kyiv and Moscow gave conflicting accounts about the people being relocated to Russia and whether they were going willingly - as Russia claimed - or were being coerced or lied to.
Russian Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev said the roughly 400,000 people evacuated to Russia since the start of the military action were from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow separatists have been fighting for control for nearly eight years.
Russian authorities said they are providing accommodations and dispensing payments to the evacuees.
But Donetsk Region Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that 'people are being forcibly moved into the territory of the aggressor state.' Denisova said those removed by Russian troops included a 92-year-old woman in Mariupol who was forced to go to Taganrog in southern Russia.
A young girl waves through the window of a bus leaving the besieged city of Mariupol for Russian territory, after part of the city were captured by Putin's troops
Ukrainian officials said that the Russians are taking people's passports and moving them to 'filtration camps' in Ukraine´s separatist-controlled east before sending them to various distant, economically depressed areas in Russia.
Among those taken, Ukraine´s Foreign Ministry charged, were 6,000 residents of Mariupol, the devastated port city in the country's east. Moscow's troops are confiscating identity documents from an additional 15,000 people in a section of Mariupol under Russian control, the ministry said.
Some could be sent as far as the Pacific island of Sakhalin, Ukrainian intelligence said, and are being offered jobs on condition they don´t leave for two years. The ministry said the Russians intend to 'use them as hostages and put more political pressure on Ukraine.'
Kyrylenko said that Mariupol´s residents have been long deprived of information and that the Russians feed them false claims about Ukraine´s defeats to persuade them to move to Russia.
'Russian lies may influence those who have been under the siege,' he said.
As for the naval attack in Berdyansk, Ukraine claimed two more ships were damaged and a 3,000-ton fuel tank was destroyed when the Russian ship Orsk was sunk, causing a fire that spread to ammunition supplies.
Zelenskyy rallied the country to keep up its military defense in hopes it would lead to peace.
'With every day of our defense, we are getting closer to the peace that we need so much. We are getting closer to victory. ... We can´t stop even for a minute, for every minute determines our fate, our future, whether we will live,' he said late Thursday in his nightly video address to the nation.
Moscow claims it is 'liberating' Ukrainian territory and that civilians are leaving the country willingly to come to Russia (pictured, 'evacuees' from Mariupol)
A Russian soldier oversees the 'evacuation' of civilians from Mariupol, which has been under siege for almost a month
Zelenskyy said thousands of people, including 128 children, have died in the first month of the war. Across the country, 230 schools and 155 kindergartens have been destroyed. Cities and villages 'lie in ashes,' he said.
Sending a signal that Western sanctions have not brought it to its knees, Russia reopened its stock market but allowed only limited trading to prevent mass sell-offs. Foreigners were barred from selling, and traders were prohibited from short selling, or betting prices would fall.
Millions of people in Ukraine have made their way out of the country, some pushed to the limit after trying to stay and cope.
At the central station in the western city of Lviv, a teenage girl stood in the doorway of a waiting train, a white pet rabbit shivering in her arms. She was on her way to join her mother and then go on to Poland or Germany. She had been traveling alone, leaving other family members behind in Dnipro.
'At the beginning I didn´t want to leave,' she said. 'Now I´m scared for my life.'
A month into the invasion, the two sides traded heavy blows in what has become a devastating war of attrition.
Ukraine´s navy said it sank a large Russian landing ship near the port city of Berdyansk that had been used to bring in armored vehicles.
Russia claimed to have taken the eastern town of Izyum after fierce fighting.
At an emergency NATO summit in Brussels, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded with the Western allies via video for planes, tanks, rockets, air defense systems and other weapons, saying his country is 'defending our common values.'
U.S President Joe Biden, in Europe for the summit and other high-level meetings, gave assurances more aid is on its way, though it appeared unlikely the West would give Zelenskyy everything he wanted, for fear of triggering a much wider war.
Around the capital, Kyiv, and other areas, Ukrainian defenders have fought Moscow's ground troops to a near-stalemate, raising fears that a frustrated Russian President Vladimir Putin will resort to chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.