Sisters Recount Escape From Mariupol as Russians Closed In

Vera and Nicole thought they had endured the worst of the war as Russia besieged their city, Mariupol, for weeks. Two sisters helped neighbors bury neighbors, melted snow for drinking water, and survived shelling that tore through their ceilings.

But by mid-March, they knew it was time to leave. They heard that Russian invaders were sweeping the southern port city and transferring Ukrainians by bus to Russia or to Russian-controlled territory.

The sisters take Vera’s 4-year-old son, Kirill, on foot out of Mariupol and embark on a difficult journey. They said they crossed a mined road dense with corpses; encountered a Russian sniper near a church, who waved to them; and survived a shelling on a flower field. After two days, the trio staggered on the highway, only to meet a Russian soldier, who showed them the way onto a packed bus.

“He told us he had set us free and asked why our faces were dark,” says Nicole. “The road ahead may be a prison – but it’s our only option.”

The bus took them to a school in the nearby town of Nikolske, which they said had been converted into a registration center run by Russia, where Ukrainians were filling out forms with their personal information. sample. It was their first step with what Ukrainian and American officials and human rights groups call “filter” centers they say are part of a system for forcing Ukrainians to be deported to Russia.

Forced population migration and so-called “filtering” are tactics used by Russia in the Chechen wars in the 1990s, according to Frederick W. Kagan, a senior fellow and director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. The strategy, he said, is to terrify the populace, submit it, keep witnesses to the atrocities and keep out anyone seen as opposed to the Russian takeover.

The story of Vera and Nicole, who asked not to use their surnames for fear of Russian retaliation, first came to light when they contacted a British humanitarian organization, United with Ukraine, which organized has been working to apply for aid for Mariupol since March. The group arranged contact with The New York Times.

The sisters, who say they are telling their story to show the world what is happening in the territory controlled by Russia, have also spoken to other news agencies. They shared videos and diaries with The Times documenting their lives in Mariupol and part of their escape from the city, which is now almost entirely under Russian control.

Rachel Denber, Human Rights Watch’s deputy director for Europe and Central Asia, said the group recorded two eyewitness accounts sent to filtering centers and said Russia’s actions “bring all signs of a forced transfer”. She added that the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Russia is a signatory, prohibits the forced transfer of civilians from the occupied territories, which would make such forced transfer a crime. war evil.

“We cannot reduce the fact that there may have been people who made the wise choice to come to Russia,” Ms. Denber said. However, she said, other Ukrainians “are leaving because they have no choice but to go to occupying power or die.”

Roads out of Russian-held territory are also notoriously dangerous in many places.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya, told the Security Council recently that there are filtration centers in three towns controlled by Russia – Nikolske, Manhush and Yalta. All three, like Mariupol, are part of the Donetsk region, bordering Russia.

Vera and Nicole said they briefly stayed at filtration centers in two of those three towns during their escape from Mariupol.

The two centers Vera and Nicole passed through in Nikolske and Manhush were not heavily guarded and some there had the choice to stay or go, they said. But they said it wasn’t much of an option: The Russians only offered safe passage in one direction, and it didn’t have to go to Ukrainian-held territory.

Vera said: “For some, their homes have been destroyed and there is nowhere to go. “Others were there to save their children. This is the only safe option left for them. “

Tatyana Moskalkova, Russia’s commissioner for human rights, denied that Ukrainians were forcibly transferred to Russia. President Vladimir V. Putin said that about a million Ukrainians had been brought to Russia, but he described the evacuation as an evacuation.

Russian authorities have described the invasion of Ukraine as a necessary mission to support their ethnic relatives, who they say face discrimination. They described efforts to bring displaced people from eastern Ukraine to Russia as a humanitarian operation to save them from Ukrainian authorities.

Vera and Nicole’s ordeal began around mid-March, when Russian soldiers were tightening their grip on Mariupol. Nicole said she had heard on the radio that the International Committee of the Red Cross had begun evacuating people from the outskirts of the city.

“We were terrified,” said Nicole, 21. “But every day we waited, we knew it was getting harder and harder to leave.”

They decided to take the risk, even if it meant leaving their family members behind.

They said goodbye to their brother, who feared that if he left with them, he might be stopped by Russian soldiers believed to be military-aged men searching for the area. control, check for evidence of service or training, such as a tattoo or callus on their trigger. finger. Their mother, who had been separated from them since the beginning of the invasion, wouldn’t even know they were gone.

In a series of video calls over the past few weeks, the sisters described an escape punctuated by brooms to death, including surviving shelling in a field.

“It was hell on earth,” Vera, 27. “We lay in the fire, praying that we would survive.”

The Russian soldier they met on the highway put them on a bus to Nikolske. They were taken to a school that had been turned into a filter place, they said. There was a long line of people, filling out forms with personal information. Others were sleeping on pieces of cardboard in the hall.

They said they had managed to avoid deportation through a combination of ingenuity, luck and the kindness of strangers.

They left Nikolske after a few hours with the help of a local Ukrainian bus driver employed by the Russians to transport people from Mariupol to the filter sites. He drove them to another school converted to a registration center in a nearby town, Manhush, where he suggested they’d have better luck finding a ride to the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia. manage.

At the nursery, the sisters said hundreds of people were waiting to be processed. They registered their names, dates of birth, hometown and slept a night in one of the classes with dozens of other people.

They learned about a group of volunteers who were picking people up in trucks and taking them to Ukrainian-administered lands. But Vera and Nicole were hesitant: They had heard that such routes were sometimes targeted by Russian troops.

However, when a Ukrainian man entered the school and offered them a free ride to Berdyansk, near the Russian border – one of the first cities captured by Russia during the war – the sisters jumped at the opportunity. . Although they will remain in Russian-controlled territory when they get there, they reasoned that it would be better to keep moving. In addition, they have a relative in Berdyansk.

“I don’t know what would have happened if that man hadn’t come into our lives at that time,” Nicole said.

From Berdyansk, the sisters boarded an evacuation truck located in a humanitarian corridor to Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine. They knew they had reached Ukrainian-held territory when they saw the bright yellow city buses on the road.

Vera said: “We stood in the street and started crying. “I never thought the sight of a bus could make me so happy.”