This false narrative is being spread across Russian media platforms, claiming that Russia adheres to the rights of Ukrainians amid the war, which Russia unleashed in Ukraine. At the same time, the message is being circulated that Russia is actively organizing humanitarian evacuation corridors, while the Ukrainians, allegedly intimidated by the West, are afraid to use them. The Russian Federation categorically denies involvement of their military in mass abuse of Ukrainian civilians and their forcible deportation to Russia.
In fact, the situation is the opposite. It is known from open sources that the Russian Federation has been forcibly taking Ukrainian citizens to its territory. According to the Ukrainian Ombudswoman Liudmyla Denisova, Russia has already deported as many as 915,000 Ukrainian citizenes. Of these, 160,000 are children, including more than 2,000 orphans. Denisova says that most of the Ukrainians abducted by Russia have their IDs seized and get sifted through filtration camps, being sent to Russia’s remote regions, even to the Far East and the areas beyond the Arctic Circle. The practice of forcible deportation of Ukrainians to Russia, according to the Ukrainian Helsinki Union for Human Rights, was launched by the Russian military back in 2014 and is now continuing in the new temporarily occupied territories. It is now difficult to name the exact number of Ukrainians forcibly taken to Russia. Detentions by force and abductions of the civilian population have become a common practice in areas temporarily controlled by Russian troops – this is confirmed by the United Nations. The UN continues to collect data on Ukrainians abducted by Russia, working to establish their fate and whereabouts.
Reputable foreign media, such as The Guardian, BBC, and The Washington Post, run their own independent investigations, confirming numerous facts of the deportation of Ukrainians to Russia. The Russian military forcibly take people out of the settlements, which they themselves fire at. Amnesty international has repeatedly pointed out that the Ukrainian authorities demand that Russia set up humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of citizens to relatively safe Ukrainian cities. However, every time, talking about the opening of the green corridors, Russia disrupted the relevant agreements reached with Ukraine. The evidence that Amnesty International has been able to gather in several of cities most devastated by Russia s indicates that people there were unable to evacuate due to constant Russian shelling. Also, the Russian armed forces executed civilians without trial or investigation. Extrajudicial executions are considered a war crime. All information collected about Russian war crimes committed on Ukrainian territory is carefully recorded by Ukrainian law enforcement and international partners: representatives of the International Criminal Court have already been deployed in Ukraine.