The battles for Mariupol became the heaviest and bloodiest since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. After this city on the Sea of Azov was blocked by Russian troops, it became almost impossible to leave from there to the territory controlled by the Ukrainian authorities. Part of the inhabitants of Mariupol was forced to flee from the bombings through the territory of the self-proclaimed DPR or the annexed Crimea to Russia, spending several days in line at the filtration camps. Why did Ukrainian refugees end up in Russia and what is happening to them there, the BBC Russian Service found out.

Nearly 5 million people have left Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion, according to the UN. Most of all – 2.8 million – went to Poland. In Romania – 750 thousand Ukrainians, in Moldova – 425 thousand.

Russia ended up with 536,000 civilians who before the war lived in Ukraine or its territories controlled by the authorities of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR. Hundreds of temporary accommodation centers (TAPs) have been opened in the Russian regions.

Humanitarian corridors from Mariupol started working in early March. From the very beginning, the Ukrainian authorities called those who were taken along them towards Russia hostages and warned about the system of filtration camps organized by the Russian authorities.

Four filtration camps have been deployed around Mariupol, in which people are kept before being deported to Russia, Petr Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, said . On April 11, he said that the city authorities were aware of 33,000 Mariupol residents who had been taken to Russia and the territory of the self-proclaimed “people’s republics” of Donbass.

The Russian authorities cited higher figures. On April 21, reporting to Putin about the almost complete capture of Mariupol, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the Russian military had evacuated 142,000 people from the city. The day before, Deputy Mayor of Mariupol Sergei Orlov said that 130,000 civilians remained in the city.

In the first week of the war, Russian troops blocked Mariupol. It is the largest city in the Donetsk region that has remained under Ukrainian control since 2014 and an important port on the Sea of Azov, so it is strategically important for the Russian army.

According to Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov, as a result of the bombing, Mariupol was destroyed by 80-90%. Living conditions for those remaining in the city are extremely difficult: there is no water supply, electricity and communications.

In early March, the family of a teacher from Mariupol Lyudmila (the woman asked not to give her real name) lost their home – a shell hit a neighboring apartment, partially destroying Lyudmila’s apartment, which had to move to the basement of the house with her sons.

At that time there was no electricity and water in the houses. In the basement, people were freezing: at minus 10 degrees outside, the room was no higher than zero. While Lyudmila and her children were hiding in the basement, Grad rockets were constantly flying over the house.

The family decided to “leave Mariupol” on March 18 because they feared they might die – either from the bombs or from starvation. Food supplies were running out.

“It was a pity for the youngest son when he said: “Mommy, I haven’t lived yet, I don’t want to die.” He is 15 years old, he already has his own dreams, his own goals for life, he already understands that he can risk his life” – says Ludmila.

Due to the lack of communication and, accordingly, any information, it was difficult to decide which way to go and where it was safer. Lyudmila and her family lived in the west of Mariupol, so they went on foot towards the village of Volodarskoe. “They ran wherever their eyes looked. We didn’t have to choose. As long as they didn’t shoot,” she recalls.

Buses stood there, and unfamiliar women organized a trip, persuaded them to go “to a safe place.”

“I say: “We need Ukraine.” They: “Let’s go. Everything will be fine, – recalls Lyudmila. – And then we were told that we were going to Novoazovsk. I was afraid that we would not get there – the minefields are nearby.”

Novoazovsk is located on the territory of the self-proclaimed DPR. There, according to Lyudmila, no one let people out of the bus: the family wanted to get out, but they were not allowed to. Passengers’ documents were checked twice on the way – in Novoazovsk and at the Russian border. Some men were interrogated, but Lyudmila’s family was not touched. Passports were being checked for so long that Lyudmila began to worry about whether they would return the documents. But they returned it anyway.

“This is the most common question – will the passports be taken away? We were shocked at first,” says volunteer Oleg Podgorny. He meets Ukrainians at the Veselo-Voznesenovka checkpoint – this is the border between Russia and the self-proclaimed DPR.

“They are still on the territory of Ukraine, they are being convinced that when crossing the border their passports will be taken away. People ask: is it true that we will have to pay two years for these 10 thousand (such a payment the Russian authorities promised to refugees – BBC ) “Someone says: are the gas chambers far away? Well, he jokes gloomily like this. You have to convince people that everything is wrong, everything is much better. They have suffered fear there, they also come here with fear,” says the volunteer.

Oleg is a resident of Taganrog. On his Facebook page there are pictures “For the army! For courage! For the truth!” and posts with hashtags #people’s army. He told the BBC that back in 2014 he helped refugees from Slavyansk, drove them in his car from the border to Krasnodar. And when the humanitarian corridor from Mariupol to Russia opened in March, Oleg again went to the border to see what was happening there.

“I was told that people go out for several days without eating, their eyes roll back from hunger. I went to the nearest settlement, bought sausages, bread, cookies, sent messages on the social network along the way: people who can, join, and I offer delivery and coordination. So people began to respond, and from that day we began to have a round-the-clock duty.”

The BBC correspondent asked Podgorny why he is horrified by the trials that befell the refugees from Ukraine, but at the same time supports the war. After all, if it were not for the Russian invasion, there would be no need for humanitarian corridors or food for refugees at the border.

The volunteer objects: they say, the refugees themselves, with whom he spoke, do not blame Russia for anything. And he calls Ukraine a violent neighbor who needs to be “calmed down by applying physical pressure.”

Oleg says that “everything started” for him on May 2, 2014 in Odessa. (Then, during clashes between participants and opponents of Euromaidan, 48 people were killed. Opponents of Euromaidan barricaded themselves in the House of Trade Unions, where a fire started, and many could not get out. After those tragic events, dozens of criminal cases were opened, but not one of them has yet resulted in a verdict .)

“The fire started by itself? Did someone condemn these people? Why are the murderers sitting in the Verkhovna Rada? Why are the Russian-speaking population having a nightmare?” – in a dispute with a BBC correspondent, volunteer Podgorny repeats the theses of Russian propaganda about the horrors of the Maidan and the crimes of “Nazis” in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin also recalled the tragedy in Odessa in his televised address on February 21, which he ended with a statement recognizing the independence of the DNR and LNR. On the third day after that address, Putin announced the start of a “special military operation” against Ukraine. This “operation” has already caused massive destruction, thousands of deaths and human suffering not seen in Europe since the Second World War.

Volunteers, coordinated by Oleg Podgorny, have been camping near the Veselo-Voznesenovka checkpoint since March 17. Now there are almost a thousand people in the chat where volunteers, food suppliers, money donors are coordinated.

At the same checkpoint there is a camp of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia with a field kitchen and tents with sleeping places. But volunteers are more flexible than the Ministry of Emergency Situations, explains Podgorny, they can adapt to specific needs: seeing that many people are bringing cats and dogs with them, they bought animal food.

“People make contact, start to cry, tell what they have experienced. They tell how they hid, how they shoot. We made a rule for ourselves – we don’t discuss the political part, we don’t ask provocative questions. If people have a desire to speak out, we listen” .

Still, volunteers cannot completely avoid politics. Journalist Vladimir Sevrinovsky said that he tried to become a volunteer at this checkpoint. But when his volunteer partner found out that he collaborated, among other things, with Meduza (the publication was entered by the Russian authorities into the register of media outlets that act as foreign agents), she called the police, who took Sevrinovsky away from the camp and fined him 2,000 rubles.

However, the fears of those traveling from Ukraine do not arise from scratch. People come to Russia scared because of what happens to them before the border. Refugees talk about filtration points on the territory of the unrecognized DPR, through which the path to Russia lies.

Four BBC interlocutors who left Ukraine on their own spoke about checks and interrogations when leaving Mariupol through the territories of the self-proclaimed DPR and Crimea annexed by Russia.

In mid-March, 20-year-old Lviv University student Daniil received a message from number 777: “Everyone who left the city will voluntarily remain alive!”

When the war began, Daniil was in Mariupol with his relatives – they lived in a private house in the Levoberezhny district with a large family with five children.

According to Daniil, such threatening SMS messages were sent to all residents of Mariupol starting from March 10. When Daniil received this message, his family had already decided to leave the city – a shell flew into their house, and there was nowhere to live.

Russia and Ukraine agreed several times to open humanitarian corridors towards Zaporozhye. Several dozen buses used them in March. Russia has disrupted the evacuation of civilians several times, Ukrainian authorities have said.

At the same time, many men cannot leave the territory of Ukraine , where martial law has been in effect since February 24 and men aged 18 to 60 are prohibited from leaving the country. Exceptions were made only for certain categories – for example, for those who have a deferment from military service, or who are dependent – from three minor children.

Daniil’s relatives learned from neighbors that the road to the self-proclaimed DPR was open. From the left bank, Daniil says, because of the shelling, it was no longer possible to travel to other Ukrainian cities. This is also confirmed by other residents of Mariupol: after the encirclement of the city in the first days of the war, it was possible to leave the Left Bank district in the east of Mariupol only towards Russia.

The road to the right bank goes through the territory of the Azovstal metallurgical plant, which for a long time remained the main stronghold of the Ukrainian army and the site of fierce battles.

“We thought for a long time whether we needed this,” recalls Daniil. “And then we decided that we had to leave at least somewhere, because now there is no house, there is nowhere to live. The city was shelled, almost every house was destroyed, all high-rise buildings were burned down and pierced by shells. Will our children survive?”

On March 17, they went down to the sea in cars – there were no more explosions, there were no shots in that direction. The family decided to go through the DPR to Russia. Exactly where, they didn’t know.

The road from Mariupol to the Rostov region took several days. At the first checkpoint, they simply checked their passport and driver’s license. Then they arrived at the village of Bezymennoye, not far from Novoazovsk, where the registration of departing Ukrainians took place – it is also called “filtering”.

There was a huge line of cars for registration and a separate line for buses – evacuation flights, they were registered in the first place, says Daniil.

In Bezymenny, employees of the DPR Ministry of Emergency Situations set up heated tents – people slept there, mostly women with children. Daniil and his family did not stay in this camp – they rented an apartment in Novoazovsk for two days, and slept in cars for two more days. Registration was completed only on the fifth day.

At the registration, representatives of the DPR tried to find people associated with the Ukrainian special services, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the SBU, and the Ukrainian police, Daniil says. All Ukrainians were photographed and fingerprinted.

“We checked photos for the presence of swastikas, correspondence, went to Instagram, Telegram, looked at which channels you subscribed to, with whom you communicate, what topics you communicate about, asked if there were any relatives in the Ukrainian special services, any friends, acquaintances there,” Daniel lists what was discussed during the interrogation.

He had photos of the destroyed Mariupol in his phone, but because of them there were no problems. Questions from the military appeared about his Lviv residence permit. “I was told for this that, like, I’m from Nazi Lvov,” Daniil recalls. “My answer was that this is your opinion and vision, but I study there and there is nothing like that.”

After registration, Daniel and his family went to the border with Russia. There they stood in line for about a day – they again checked cars, bags, phones and asked about acquaintances in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and law enforcement agencies of Ukraine.

It is the filtration points, and not the camps on Russian territory, that cause the most concern for Civic Assistance, an organization that helps refugees in Russia (included by the Russian authorities in the register of organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent). Although chairman Svetlana Gannushkina knows only one case when, as a result of interrogations, a person was not let through, but – according to his mother – was sent to some kind of prison for prisoners. Everyone else is given some sort of filtering card and taken to the Russian border.

Daniil and his relatives were sheltered by the family of a priest near Taganrog. They spent a couple of weeks in Russia and left for one of the European countries.

“We feel what? That everything is lost now,” Daniil shares. “It’s me who is still young, but my sister built a house, gave birth to two children, and now she has nothing. I have been living in Mariupol for more than a year, I have been there since childhood “I thought that there would be something like in 2014, that they would shell the city, and that would be the end of it. I didn’t think that they would destroy the city and wipe it off the face of the earth.”

Out of desperation, some Ukrainians had to evacuate through the annexed Crimea. The family of the programmer Anton was planning to leave Mariupol for Zaporozhye – the Russian military told about one of these corridors, who once occupied the entrance to their house.

On March 16, Anton and his wife heard how in one of the rooms in the apartment where they lived, “windows began to crumble” – they were shot at. Anton lowered his wife and one and a half year old child into the basement, and then returned to the apartment.

“I go into the apartment – my parents and the military are standing. I come closer, look at his hand – he has a white armband (these are worn by the Russian military – BBC ). I say: “Hello. – Hello. Everyone, we have come to free you. “Understood,” Anton recalls a conversation with a military man.

Then about 30 military men entered the entrance – this was now their base. “They said that a sniper was working on them and therefore they had to close down,” Anton says.

They tried not to conflict with the military and not to communicate, but it was possible to overhear what they were talking about. So Anton learned that the military were from the Crimea. Some people at the entrance thanked them: “Thank you guys, you are returning May 9th.”

Residents of the house asked the soldiers how they could leave the city. They showed them the direction to the village of Volodarskoye – supposedly there is a corridor along which you can go.

When the military left their house, Anton and his family packed their things and drove in the direction they were advised, but at the very first checkpoint, the military – either Russian or from the DPR formations – said “not to meddle” in Zaporozhye. “It will be hot for you there,” Anton recalls their words.

Then the family went towards the Crimea. Along the way, Anton counted at least 25 roadblocks. Somewhere they checked correspondence in Telegram (Anton prudently cleaned his phone before leaving), somewhere they looked at things, somewhere they asked to see their hands and neck (this is how they look for military men among men, including fighters of the Azov regiment – they often getting tattoos).

According to Anton, the Russian military treated them normally everywhere. “Probably, they think that they are performing some kind of valiant mission – they are releasing someone. They probably thought that we see heroes in them. We didn’t want to run into trouble and also behaved politely. Our goal was to get out,” explains Anton.

There were also interrogations at the entrance to the Crimea, in Dzhankoy – FSB officers interrogated, Anton suggests. There were about 200 cars in the queue, we had to stand for about 19 hours. They asked what they had seen, whether there were relatives in the troops, about their attitude to the “situation”:

“It was scary, I confess – I slandered and said that I did not share the position of Ukraine. You feel unpleasant when you say that.”

The surgeon Vlad from the Mariupol 4th hospital was traveling along the same road through the Crimea with his pregnant wife. Vlad decides to leave before his other colleagues for the sake of the safety of his wife and unborn child. They came across far fewer checkpoints along the way – no more than seven.

They spent about 15 hours in line at the entrance to Dzhankoy. There were about 60 cars there. The men were asked to show their phones, asked about all contacts. Interrogations could last from half an hour to six hours – they were also conducted by employees of the Russian FSB. We talked to Vlad for about half an hour. During interrogation, he was offered to apply for refugee status.

“Who are you?” Vlad recalls the questions of the FSB officers. “Doctor. – Did you treat the military? – No, I saved civilians. – What do you have there?” What to do next. – Apply for a refugee. – I’ll think again. – Come to our hospital. Work for us now. ”

Vlad assumes that all citizens of Ukraine are offered to apply for refugee status, so that later Russia can show that it nevertheless liberates Ukrainians (and they flee from Ukraine to Russia). Vlad’s entire family refused to accept the asylum offered at the border. A week later, Vlad left Crimea with his family for Georgia, and from there he flew to Europe.

With the consent of the citizens of Ukraine, national documents are taken away and a certificate of consideration of refugee status is issued, and then a certificate of asylum, lawyer Maria Krasova, who works with Civic Assistance, told the BBC. But human rights activists are not concerned about this procedure – if necessary, upon application, the Ukrainian passport can be returned.

After leaving, Vlad began to regret it and worry that he had abandoned everyone. The doctor even wanted to return to Mariupol, but in early April it became clear that there was nowhere to return now.

Mariupol city hospital No. 4 was shelled from all sides for a long time – it was practically destroyed, “the third floor in some places fell on the first one,” neurologist Yevgeny Shepotinnik, who left the hospital among the last, told the BBC.

On April 4, after shelling, one of the therapeutic buildings burned down. The next few days, the doctors and patients who remained there were evacuated from the hospital – the Russian military took them to Vinogradnoye in armored personnel carriers, and from there they left by bus for Novoazovsk.

No one began to resist – the doctors and the wounded patients had no other options, the humanitarian corridor towards Zaporozhye was not opened to them, although the doctors counted on it very much.

“The only desire was to leave the front line, otherwise we wouldn’t have survived,” recalls Shepotinnik. “And when you left the front line, you can return to anywhere in the world.”

Shepotinnik takes this export in armored personnel carriers to the DPR as a given: when hostilities continue in Mariupol, one can enter western Ukraine only through Russia and Europe. This long route is the only way to return to Ukraine, the doctor says.

From Novoazovsk, Shepotinnik went to St. Petersburg, and from there he left for Europe – he categorically did not want to stay in Russia.

Ukrainians who are forced to leave the city on evacuation flights through the DPR, after passing the Russian border in the Rostov region, are taken to Taganrog: there, in the sports palace, a transshipment point has been organized where people can wash, sleep, and relax. Then they – already on trains – are transported to different regions of Russia.

According to Lyudmila from Mariupol, their bus arrived in Taganrog only after 12-14 hours. In the large gym where they were settled, there were a lot of folding beds, you could eat and take a shower – Lyudmila’s family had such an opportunity for the first time in a month.

The woman says that they were offered to open an account with Sberbank in order to receive 10 thousand rubles each, which Putin ordered to pay to everyone arriving from Donbass to the Rostov region even before the start of the war (the money was allocated from the Reserve Fund of the Russian Federation).

But Lyudmila and her relatives refused these 10 thousand – they did not want to stay in Russia, but planned to leave for Europe. “Why should I want to stay in Russia? I am Ukrainian. I lost my apartment in Mariupol through their fault,” the woman says indignantly.

The next day, employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations approached the settlers from Ukraine and told them to get ready: “There will be a train to Tula.”

“We refused, they said that we have relatives in Russia – we can go to them,” recalls Lyudmila. “We were told that we could get off at any station. But it turned out that this was a hoax. Nobody could get off. to Tula. We were not pulled by the hand, but we were misled. In Tula, we said that we would not go anywhere further.”

From Tula, Lyudmila’s family went by bus to one of the European countries. On the border from the Russian side, they were asked a lot of questions – they were asked to tell what they saw in Mariupol, what military locations. Lyudmila says that they did not answer these questions: “We said that we did not see anything and do not know anything. In principle, this is how it is: when the city is constantly bombed, you sit in the basement and do not see where it is coming from.”

From March 5, citizens of Ukraine and people with passports of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR can enter Russia using their internal documents. According to them, they can leave Russia for their countries of permanent residence. The corresponding decree was signed by Putin in March.

But it is also possible to leave with an internal Ukrainian passport for a third country. The European Union, in turn, also introduced relief at the beginning of March: the Temporary Protection Directive allows entry into the EU for those whose identity has been established – and according to what documents this was done, it is not so important.

The programmer Anton and his wife left Russia for a European country on internal documents – the family left their foreign passports at home in a turmoil.

There are many hundreds of camps like the one offered to Lyudmila in Tula in Russia. In the Rostov region alone, there are about 300 temporary accommodation centers for refugees.

In the Leningrad region, refugees are met by volunteers in jackets with the emblem of “United Russia”. And in Penza, for example, the opposition volunteers.

Igor Zhulimov and Irina Gurskaya met at the “navalnings”, as Zhulimov put it. After the rallies in the winter of 2021, they did not communicate much – after all, there were no new protests. But then they found another way to apply their efforts: they found out that refugees from Mariupol were brought to the village of Leonidovka, and decided to purchase humanitarian aid.

Igor and Irina announced a fundraiser. People responded very actively. “We did not expect such a resonance at all. We were raised 600 thousand, we were stunned. Such a response imposes responsibility, we must act,” Zhulimov said only about the first days of fundraising.

Volunteers bought clothes, shoes, hygiene items, baby food and went to Leonidovka to distribute all this. Igor Zhulimov also heard rumors that refugees were forcibly kept in the camps, their documents were taken away. Therefore, he carefully watched how life in the camp works.

The exit from the territory is free, Zhulimov noted. The administration did not object to the plan to buy the refugees train tickets, as suggested by the volunteers. “They say: at least take it now, just let them write a statement in order to free up a bed,” Igor recalls.

Interviewed residents of the temporary accommodation center assured that they had documents in their hands (if only they had documents at all, and did not stay at home and did not get lost in the bustle of the evacuation).

Zhulimov also liked living conditions. The refugees were settled in the former town of chemical waste liquidators: in rooms for two people per room, with hot water and all amenities. A school has already opened for children there, volunteer Irina Gurskaya noted. Ukrainians were even taken on a tour of Penza: the bus with the tourists returned in front of the volunteers.

The observations of a volunteer from Penza are confirmed by Tamara (the name was changed at the request of the heroine): a resident of the city of Rubizhnoye now lives in a TAP in Shatura, near Moscow, together with her 82-year-old mother.

“They feed well, three times a day, they give fruits and sweets. They entertain: they took them to a concert, to a hairdresser. Women need to take care of themselves, but no one has had their hair cut for a long time. Manicure, coloring – everything is free. ” says Tamara.

They live in a children’s camp in rooms with four beds. Nobody bothers to leave the camp: its inhabitants regularly go to the store nearby.

Tamara and her mother wanted to go exactly to Russia: they had acquaintances in the Moscow region who were ready to give them shelter. They were taken out by the military of the self-proclaimed LPR: the first section of the road had to be driven standing in the back of a KAMAZ truck. After staying with friends for several weeks, they began to look for where they could move, and ended up in this TAP near Moscow.

Tamara applied for temporary asylum. Ukrainians are now easily given this status for a year, Svetlana Gannushkina, head of Civic Assistance, told the BBC. It was the same in 2014-2015, when residents of Ukraine fleeing the war also went to Russia.

But Tamara is not going to set up a new life in Russia: she hopes to return home as soon as the fighting subsides. Her husband remained in Rubizhne – he takes care of his sick mother – and 18-year-old son.

At the end of last week, Penza volunteer Igor Zhulimov put several Ukrainians from the refugee accommodation center in Leonidovka on a train. They reached the Estonian border on the messengers and left Russia.

The police chief of Narva, Estonia’s closest city to the border with Russia, estimated in early April that about 200 Ukrainian citizens cross the Russian-Estonian border every day.

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