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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Accounts of interrogations, strip-searches emerge from Russian ‘filtration' camps in Ukraine
2022-06-17
[France24] Shortly after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, reports of so-called 'filtration' camps in the country’s east began to emerge. Since then, thousands of Ukrainian civilians have passed through the centres, where Russian forces hunt for Ukrainian "nationalists". This means that many of those being processed are subject to interrogations, strip-searches or worse.

In early April, Vitaly and his wife and one-year-old daughter were offered a safe passage out of Mariupol. The Russians were going to evacuate them and other civilians by bus to Nikolske, a small industrial town controlled by pro-Russian forces around 20 kilometres northwest of the besieged city.

Once they arrived, the men were separated from the women, and sent toward a trailer where they were told they would be searched. Or "filtered", as the troops guarding them put it.

"We took turns going into the trailer, where two soldiers checked everything: phones, tattoos, personal belongings," he told the independent Russian-language news website Meduza in a May 12 interview. When Vitaly entered the trailer, he saw two men stripped to their underwear — one of them with his hands behind his head facing the wall, and the other sitting in a corner on the floor.

"As I understood it, they recognised [them as] participants of some anti-Russian rallies."

Vitaly, who was also strip-searched, was luckier, but only after successfully managing to explain why he had an American eagle tattooed on his body, and why his mobile phone was so clean of any messenger apps. "I had to prove I had nothing to do with the [Ukrainian military]," he said. "In the end they let me go."

’Men are rounded up and sent for filtration’
Posted by:Besoeker

#17  BTW, didn't Russia do exactly the same thing to East Prussia after WWII, now known as Kaliningrad. As an old Greek moralist once wrote - it all depends upon who's ox is getting gored.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2022-06-17 13:13  

#16  Don't get it? Hey, they ripping down, renaming, and reclassifying anything and everything here in the name of diversity already. They're indoctrinating school children in using approved 'pronouns'. They actively and openly discriminate against the majority of people all in the name of 'justice' and operate a multi-tiered legal system based upon approved groups. If you don't play along you are a white supremacist. Ain't nothing new here.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2022-06-17 12:45  

#15  #11 ..so just like 'white supremacist' the Left is always screaming about in America.

Ok... I get that mindless sarcasm is like a reflex for some but it would help you to know that, for the better part of two decades, at least since the time of the pseudo-democrat and professional bandit Yulia Tymoshenko, Russian speakers in Ukraine have seen their basic rights and dignity under assault by chauvinistic Ukrainian politicians and thugs.

A better US analogy would be if in California an "Aztlan" ethno-nationalist political party along with street thugs were to gain power in Sacramento and
- force all classroom instruction in the state to be conducted entirely in Spanish and banned English from all official communications
- replace the English names of every town and street with Spanish names and dub Hollywood movies in Spanish
- redirect state funding from wealthy Anglo regions into the impoverished majority-Hispanic counties
- take over local regulatory, police and zoning rights from Anglo communities
- give funds to and direct their paramilitary "Aztlan" street thug battalions to beat, rape, torture and kill Anglos in coastal cities where Anglos are dominant
- declare that San Diego and Orange County belong to Mexico
- invite Chinese PLA advisers in to train and arm the Aztlan battalions

Nice, huh?
Posted by: Oye Como Va   2022-06-17 12:37  

#14  Ref #12: It's the guy and gal at the other end of the bar having a vulgar slap fest. Pay for your drink and find the door.

However you label it, it's really none of our business.
Posted by: Besoeker   2022-06-17 12:11  

#13  #10, go web search the American saying "If you have to explain yourself, you already lost..."
Posted by: M. Murcek   2022-06-17 12:02  

#12  To be absolutely clear, a Russian speaker who intends to describe Nazis or what we are erroneously calling "denazification" would use the word "fascist."

There is no question in the minds of any fluent Russian audience that Putin is speaking about removing the cancer of violently chauvinist, brutally anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism. This cancer was more than any other factor responsible for the 8-year reign of terror against Russian speakers in Ukraine from March 2014-February 2022.
Posted by: Jean-Paul   2022-06-17 12:00  

#11  ..so just like 'white supremacist' the Left is always screaming about in America.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2022-06-17 11:59  

#10  The confusion about "denazification" arises, as so often happens, from a bad translation compounded by political and historical ignorance. English speakers do not grasp that that the term is not strictly referring to "Nazis" but more generally describes Ukrainian nationalists.

In Russian as in German (and Italian as well), the 't' in the word "national" is pronounced "ts" -- like the 'z' in Mozart. In French and English it's softened to 's' and 'sh' so that there is a sharp distinction between na-shin/na-si-on and the very specific na-tsee.

But in Russian as in German there is no difference, linguistically or phonetically, between na-ts-i and na-ts-ional. When Russians refer to the Nazis, they use the term fashisti.

Politically, Putin is referring to the extreme nationalists in Ukraine -- politicians as well as paramilitary thugs and outright terrorists, but all of the violently anti-Russian forces who were responsible for stripping Russian speakers in Ukraine of basic rights, be they political (as in Crimea) or physical safety (as in Donbas) or economic and cultural-linguistic (everywhere).

"De-nationalization" means curbing the ability of Russian-haters inside and outside of Ukraine's government to suppress, steal from, harass or beat and terrorize Russian-speakers.
Posted by: Jean-Paul   2022-06-17 11:52  

#9   That's a mild description.

First choice appears to be shooting them or blowing them up with artillery...
Posted by: trailing wife   2022-06-17 11:40  

#8  Lest we forget, the real victims in this war are the Ukrainian Transgenders, who were having rights issues even before the invasion.

The Ghost of Kyeeev heard the call, and became the world's first Transgender Fighter Ace. Eighty men tried, and eighty men died, and now they are buried together on the countryside.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2022-06-17 11:36  

#7  That's a mild description. I think it's probably more straight up cultural cleansing than that.

Even some anti-nazis like the master race idea.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2022-06-17 11:30  

#6   At a minimum it means that Russia doesn’t want to import the current “decadent” western memes and themes into Russian society

It sounds to me like by denazification President Putin means removing from the country any Ukrainian who thinks himself not Russian.
Posted by: trailing wife   2022-06-17 11:26  

#5  I'm definitely anti-nazi. However, the left tells me I am a nazi. You can understand the confusion.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2022-06-17 09:37  

#4  Putin has said repeatedly that one of the 5 primary objectives is the “denatzification” of the Ukraine. That word doesn’t translate well into English. At a minimum it means that Russia doesn’t want to import the current “decadent” western memes and themes into Russian society (LGBQXYZ, privileged ethnic groups, printing money based on vapor, etc). Russia isn’t the USSR. Americans don’t seem to grasp that. All that aside, I was taught to efficiently process civilians as they pass through to rear areas to minimize the chance of allowing infiltrators to slip by. Simply prudent
Posted by: Cloluck Bourbon1058   2022-06-17 09:32  

#3  It's the cavity search I mainly try to avoid...
Posted by: M. Murcek   2022-06-17 07:55  

#2  ^Oh, I don't know.
Back in '81 I was stripped at LAX.
Returning from a courier run to S.kor with orders in hand.
Posted by: Skidmark   2022-06-17 07:51  

#1  “As I understood it, they recognised [them as] participants of some anti-Russian rallies.”

Luckily for us, that sort of thing could never happen here.

Posted by: Besoeker   2022-06-17 06:53  

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