"They can be 'written off' at any time": how male prisoners survive in a filtration camp
Source: Ukrainska Pravda
Author: Viktoria Andreeva
Veronika and Oleg have known each other for a long time, but they’ve only been dating for a year. She lived in Mariupol, and her boyfriend lived in the suburbs. Shortly before the war, the couple had planned to move in together.
The couple spent the first weeks of the occupation apart with their parents. Due to communication disruptions, they were only able to get in touch after Veronika had left for Ukraine. Her boyfriend, however, did not make it in time.
Veronika told "Ukrainska Pravda. Life" the story of her boyfriend, who is currently being held in a filtration camp in the Donetsk region.
Veronika left her hometown of Mariupol on March 24. The journey was long, but eventually she made it to Ukrainian territory.
Oleg and his parents also wanted to leave the village of Mirne for safer territory. However, the day before their departure, their neighbors’ car was shot at during an evacuation attempt, so the family decided to wait a few days.
A day later, people “came” to their home. DPR soldiers put Oleg and the other men on buses and took them to Bezymenne (about 600 people) and Kozatske (about 200 people).
– On the 16th, they went through screening. Their fingerprints were taken, they were photographed, and they were subjected to harsh interrogation. In the style of the NKVD, they asked: who are you, what do you do, do you have any ties to law enforcement agencies, or do you know anyone in the security forces? Many were beaten during the interrogation.
Veronika’s boyfriend is now living in school classrooms in the village of Kozatske along with the men he used to live on the same street with. The youngest is 18, and the oldest is over 60.
They weren’t allowed to take any personal belongings with them, and their passports were confiscated.
“A phone is the only thing he took. They were all forcibly dragged from their homes. Some were told it would be for 15 minutes, others for two hours, and others for two days. And now it’s been four weeks since their documents were taken and they’ve been held without any information. The guards “feed” them promises and say there was no “special order.”
Every evening they check the phones, so Oleg “cleans” his messages. Couples, for example, communicate on Instagram. He cancels the sending of messages, so there are no traces of “deletion.”
– In this camp, you can charge your phone, and there’s even weak Wi-Fi. A man can get in touch whenever he wants. But the internet is bad because everyone is trying to contact their loved ones. They can even go outside, but they can’t escape.
The school grounds aren’t exactly a closed facility, so two men have already tried to get out. But they didn’t succeed—security caught them and beat them severely, after which the escapees were loaded into a police van and sent to a detention center in Donetsk.
—In their free time, they walk around the grounds; there’s a store nearby where they can supposedly get a signal. Some even go fishing. But there have been more frequent instances where they’re offered work in exchange for food.
Veronika says the men are being held in inhumane conditions. They sleep on the floor in classrooms without mattresses; some sleep on chairs.
Furthermore, the “guards” completely ignore the men’s medical needs and condition in the camp.
– There’s no question of even being able to wash up. They are living in completely unsanitary conditions. The only “amenity” is a sink with a spout that you have to fill with water.
According to Nika, absolutely all the men have symptoms of acute respiratory viral infections, and some even have pneumonia. The situation is getting worse every day: three people in Bezymenne have active tuberculosis. There are no medicines or doctors.
– There has already been a fatality: a man died because he wasn’t given medical care! The soldiers stood there watching him suffocate and refused to call an ambulance. When his agony ended, they wrapped him in a sheet and took him away.
Every day, Veronika and her acquaintances, whose relatives have been sent to the filtration camp, call all the “DPR” security agencies to get information on when the men will be released and why they are being held there.
– The “DPR Ministry of Emergency Situations” and the “Ministry of Internal Affairs” pass the buck back and forth, sometimes even claiming that the men have already been released. This means that at any moment, the captives could be “written off.”
In other words, according to their records, the man has been returned home. But in reality—they’ll do whatever they want with them, and no one will find out about it... Because they’ve “returned home.”
According to rumors and unofficial channels, from which the prisoners’ families gather information bit by bit, there are several possible scenarios. For example:
- they will be brought to the May 9 parade and dressed as prisoners so they can march there;
- they will be conscripted into the “DPR” army;
- they will be used as human shields;
- they will be sent to work under the supervision of a “DPR” convoy.
The men have also been warned that their phones will be taken away soon. So no one knows when or how they will lose contact or disappear.