Satellites Show the Alarming Extent of Russian Detention Camps

A day after the six-month anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, a new report reveals never before seen information about Russia's filtration camp system in eastern Ukraine, in which civilians and prisoners of war are detain, interrogated, and sometimes forcibly deported to Russia. The researchers believe that there are graves near the camps where POWs were held.

The camps were identified by the Conflict Observatory, a US government-funded partnership between Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab, the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative, and the geographic information system. Their report used images from Telegram channels, commercial satellites, and existing documentation to identify the locations of camps used by the Russian military for interrogation, detention, and registration of Ukrainian civilians.

According to Nathaniel Raymond, a co-leader of the Humanitarian Research Lab and lecturer at Yale's Jackson School of Global Affairs, this is the first report to identify high confidence 21 facilities engaged in the Filtration of Ukrainian civilians. A previous intelligence report had identified 18 suspected centers. It's not possible to estimate how many people have come through and how many are in jail. That is not doable. We have a feeling that the scale here is covering an oblast, the equivalent of a state.

The US government reports indicate that the system has increased in recent months. Only those who have permission from the Russians have been allowed to visit the camps. Detained people who have been released from facilities have reported facing interrogation and even torture. Former prisoners have reported that they were held in cells so small that they slept in shifts, that they were separated from their families, and that their phone contact was collected.

According to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, some 1.7 million people had already arrived in Russia by June 25, 2022. According to many experts, these tactics are genocidal.

Matthew Steinhelfer is a deputy assistant secretary in the US State Department. It's a war crime.

The US secretary of state said in a statement last month that Russian authorities have transported tens of thousands of people to detention facilities inside Russian-controlled Donetsk, where many are said to have been tortured. Evidence is mounting that Russian authorities are also detaining or disappearing thousands of Ukrainian civilians who don't pass 'filtration.' Ukrainians are considered threatening because of their potential association with the Ukrainian army, territorial defense forces, media, government, and civil society groups.