By Elizabeth Piper

KYIV, Reuters – Mila Pantchenko found herself in southwest Russia on a platform for stations after she was starved and forced by pro-Russian forces into surrendering to them to flee the siege of Mariupol.

She was met at Taganrog station, an area on the Sea of Azov. There she was escorted to a train with 200 Ukrainians. They were told that they would be transported to Rostov Region, Russia, which is bordering Ukraine.

    But when the train arrived at its destination, the 53-year-old found herself in Tula province in central Russia, in the town of Suvorov, some 1,000 km (621 miles) away.

    “There were a lot of police. Panchenko stated that the station had been sealed off to prevent Russian civilians from approaching us.” She added that they were greeted by many people, but she refused entry to the son of Tula friend – whom she didn’t identify. We were welcomed with cookies and a smile.

    In addition to Panchenko, Reuters spoke to another Ukrainian woman – Natalia Bil-Maer – who escaped Mariupol last month, as well as the relatives of two other refugees.

The picture they painted was of Mariupol civilians fleeing from their besieged home to Russia. This journey involved multiple searches by pro-Russian forces and often saw them transported far away from Ukraine’s borders. 

    Reuters was unable to verify their stories independently. 

    The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment about the independent accounts provided to Reuters by Panchenko and Bil-Maer of Ukrainians being sent to distant parts of Russia without any choice.

Moscow denied that it had intentionally targeted civilians in the invasion of Ukraine on February 24th.

    Panchenko said she and the other Ukrainians on the train were taken by Russian authorities to a sanatorium in the Tula region called Krainka. The room she was assigned had a small refrigerator, television, and two beds. On a table, she was served traditional gingerbread and sweet biscuits as well as water and iced tee.

    The Krainka resort did not respond to a request for comment on its role in sheltering the Ukrainians.

    After arriving at the sanatorium, Panchenko – the duty manager of a cistern factory before the war and a member of the local council – said she was fingerprinted, photographed and questioned in front of a prosecutor, whom Reuters was unable to identify.

Panchenko, who can speak both Ukrainian and Russian, was asked if the Ukrainian suppression of Russian has been worsening since 2014. She said yes.

    In that year, Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula while two breakaway regions of Ukraine — Donetsk and Luhansk — declared themselves people’s republics with Moscow’s backing. 

    One of Russia’s justifications for what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine is to protect Russian speakers from what Moscow brands aggression from Ukrainian nationalists. Ukraine denies this. 

    “I only said that I could speak Ukrainian and that I loved it … “I stated that I haven’t seen any Russian suppression.”  

    FORCED DEPORTATIONS

    Liudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s ombudswoman for human rights, said last week that Russia had taken 134,000 people from Mariupol and that 33,000 of those were forcibly deported. Reuters couldn’t verify these figures. 

    Rachel Denber, deputy director for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch, said her organisation had documented at least one instance where there was “no question that it would be considered a forced transfer” – which she defined as “being forced to go to the side that has invaded your country.”

    The 1949 Geneva Conventions, which defined legal standards for humanitarian treatment in conflict, prohibit the mass forcible transfer of civilians during an international conflict to the territory of the occupying power, classifying it as a war crime.

    Russia says it is offering humanitarian aid to those wanting to leave Mariupol. On its website on March 12, a Russian government resolution listed the locations of 95,909 Russians who have fled Ukraine and two other breakaway republics.

    A month later, on April 14, Russian Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev said that 138,014 civilians had been rescued by Russian forces just from Mariupol, as the fighting intensified. 

    Panchenko said she fled Mariupol on March 17 when Chechen troops seized the building on the left bank of the Kalmius river where she and dozens of other civilians had been sheltering in a basement.

    “They said that we had to evacuate because they wanted to set up their headquarters there,” Panchenko said by telephone from Brescia, in northern Italy, where she is now living, having left Russia.

    With scant supplies of food and water, Panchenko said she had no choice but to get into the cars offered by the Chechen soldiers to take them to Russian-controlled parts of Donetsk.

They were transported by car and then bus to the village of Bezimenne, where police from the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) have set up processing facilities, Panchenko said. Separatist police took their fingerprints and interrogated them.

    Spokespeople for the DPR and the Chechen authorities did not respond to a request for comment. 

    “We were asked if we had any connection with the Ukrainian Armed Forces, if we knew anyone from the Azov Battalion,” she said, referring to a Ukrainian National Guard unit that Moscow has accused of targeting Russian speakers. “We were not on any lists so they put me on another bus to take us to Taganrog train Station.”    

    TRAINS SENT ACROSS RUSSIA

    On March 22, Bil-Maer fled the basement of a relative’s apartment block with her husband and two children – aged 6 and 7 – as the Russian assault drew closer. Their plan was to travel to Berdiansk (to the west), but they were stopped by shelling.

    “We had only one way left to go because that part of town was controlled by Russian soldiers … They transported us to Russia and deported us.

    As they were taken through Russian-controlled territory, Bil-Maer said Ukrainians were repeatedly questioned and men were asked to strip, as Russian forces searched for combatants.

She was able to find herself on Russian soil by 23 March and was then taken to Taganrog station.

    “In Taganrog, there were a lot of nice words said to us: “We’ve saved you. We’ll feed you”,” said Bil-Maer, who saw trains headed to Tambov and Vladimir in central Russia. “It was evident that every train went to a different location.”

    As soon as Bil-Maer could use her phone, she called an aunt in Russia’s Krasnodar region, across the Sea of Azov from east Ukraine, and she came to pick up the family.

    But, once in her aunt’s home, Bil-Maer said she was reluctant to go outside because she was tired of being told by strangers that the Russian bombing was Ukraine’s fault for attacking Russian-speakers. She said many Russians echoed the Kremlin’s position – reproduced in the media – that civilian casualties in the conflict were caused by Ukraine’s own armed forces to discredit Moscow. 

    Bil-Maer quickly fled to Georgia with her husband and children.

    She does not know how she will return home: she is struggling to get help from the Ukrainian embassy and only has her internal passport with her. Also, her husband fled the country illegally with her because he was not of fighting age.

    Ukraine foreign ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said Ukraine had to close its diplomatic missions in Russia for security reasons but embassies in the neighboring countries would provide consular assistance to Ukrainians deported to Russia to enable them to return home, including temporary travel documents. 

    After 10 days at the Krainka resort, Panchenko said she persuaded the Russians to allow her to leave for Nizhny Novgorod, a city on the Volga river east of Moscow, to stay with the family of an elderly neighbor from Mariupol who had fled with her.

    Once outside the resort, Panchenko and her neighbor, who she identified as Zhan, went instead to Moscow and then to the Baltic States. Panchenko eventually found her way to Italy. 

     “But my plan is to make some money and return to my home Mariupol, if it stays Ukrainian,” she said. “I really want to go back to Ukraine.”