Satellite images and videos verified by The Washington Post show that in recent weeks, Russian-backed forces began building a camp just east of the besieged city of Mariupol, Ukraine.
A British news outlet, I, reported on the camp on Sunday, citing satellite imagery released by Planet Labs. The images of Bezimenne, a town under Russian control less than an hour’s drive from Mariupol, were taken Tuesday and were provided to The Post by Maxar Technologies.
Leaders of a breakaway area in the Donetsk region announced through their Telegram channel on Wednesday that together with Russian authorities, they had set up a “tent city of 30 tents” for Mariupol residents, with the capacity to hold up to 450 people.
Accompanying video geolocated by The Post shows the structures.
Interviewees in the video say they had recently arrived from Mariupol.
The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations said the tent city in Bezimenne was a “life-supporting” one for refugees from Mariupol. Russia is operating “as a convoy of humanitarian aid,” Sergey Golova, a ministry official, said in the video released Wednesday. Russian forces were providing residents with “all necessities,” such as cellphones and medical aid, he said.
Ukrainian leaders accused Russian forces last week of forcibly moving hundreds of thousands of civilians to Russia against their will. Moscow said the refugees have voluntarily fled east during the war. Ukraine has objected to any route evacuating civilians to Russia or its ally Belarus.
The Russian Defense Ministry has shared posts almost daily on its selected evacuation routes for Ukrainian civilians trapped in cities. Mariupol — which Russian forces have attacked for more than three weeks — was among the first cities given a proposed route, taking residents east through territory controlled by separatists to Rostov-on-Don in Russia.
The 100-mile journey followed a highway parallel to the Sea of Azov’s coast, passing by Bezimenne and the Russian city of Taganrog, where Russian authorities said other camps for Mariupol residents had been established.
The U.N. refugee agency estimates that about 270,000 Ukrainians have gone to Russia in the month since the Kremlin began its invasion of Ukraine. Leaders in Ukraine and Russia last week gave totals closer to 400,000, while differing on the reason for the migration.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry and parliament say the Russian army has forcibly “deported” Ukrainian citizens, including thousands of residents of Mariupol, the devastated port city. The ministry has warned of Russia confiscating people’s passports and suggested the Kremlin wants hostages for political leverage.
In a statement Sunday, the Ukrainian parliament’s committee on human rights said Mariupol residents have been taken to “filtration camps” for inspection of their phones and personal documents. Then, the committee said, “some Mariupol residents were redirected to some remote cities in Russia, while the fate of the others remains unknown.”
Russian officials have criticized Ukraine’s refusal to support evacuations toward Russia and say they are helping a wave of refugees — many of them from the eastern Donbas region, where pro-Russian separatists controlled some territory before the invasion began.
Just before the invasion last month, U.S. officials told the United Nations that they had credible information the Kremlin was compiling lists of Ukrainians “to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation,” an assertion Russia has denied.
Sarah Cahlan and Arkady Dolina contributed to this report.
