“Bruises on the shoulders can mean you are a sniper,” Olena explains from a cafe in Tbilisi, Georgia. She was terrified. “I told him I was turning 60 this August. “How could I be a sniper?” The officer did not seem interested. “I do not wear my glasses anyway,” he told her. “Take off your shirt now.” Stories like that of Olena from a filter camp in Nikolske, a city in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), are common among the growing number of Ukrainian refugees now in Georgia. Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an estimated 20,000 Ukrainians have entered Georgia, many of them from Russia via Georgia’s northern mountainous border in Kazbegi. Unable to leave Russian-occupied cities such as Mariupol and Kherson to the west in Ukrainian-controlled territories, many Ukrainians face a terrible dilemma: stay in your besieged city or flee to the country that has destroyed your home. . To enter Russia, many Ukrainians are forced to undergo so-called filtering, a process in which they are photographed, interrogated, fingerprinted and the contents of their phones scrutinized. The men were ordered to undress in their underwear, their bodies were searched for tattoos that could reveal a connection to Ukrainian nationalist groups. Everyone is wondering if they or anyone they know has served in the Ukrainian army. The Ukrainians are leaving Russian filter camps During Olena’s interrogation, she recalled how a guard interrogating a man at the next table found a keychain bearing the image of the Ukrainian coat of arms. Four guards then beat the man savagely with batons and kicks to the head before throwing him out to sub-zero temperatures without a coat or hat. Filter camps have been set up in towns and villages mainly concentrated in the DNR, including Novoazovsk, Mangush, Bezimenne and Nikolske. Ukrainians leaving Mariupol by bus often arrive at the filter camps unknowingly after being told they will be transported to Ukrainian-controlled cities. Upon arrival, they are usually not allowed to leave the city. Filtering usually ends in one of two ways: either you “pass” the interrogation and they give you a small, sealed piece of paper with the date of your filtration and the signature of the supervising officer, or you will be kept for further interrogation. The “camps” occupy schools, cultural centers, sports halls and other public buildings. Conditions are often miserable and the camps are not well organized. People like Olena, who was traveling with Tamara’s 65-year-old sister and Tamara’s 70-year-old husband, and like others who did not give her full name, slept first on the floor and then in a cardboard box. In the early days one meal a day was offered from the canteen. Then the Russians closed the canteen completely and told them to find their own food. For Maksym and Iulia, from Mariupol, filtering was also a long ordeal, although they were lucky to be offered a house close to one of Maksym’s classmates. They spent almost a month waiting to be filtered in Mangush. “Our queue was 347,” says Maksym. “You come in and ask what the number is today and you realize that the number has only decreased by two or three. Why was it so slow? The process itself takes about 30 minutes. ” Only after Maksym told a military pharmacist that insulin had been depleted for Iulia’s diabetes did their wait accelerate and they were filtered that afternoon. Waiting in a corridor, they saw a man with a tired Ukrainian army being interrogated on his knees, with his hands tied behind his back. Maksym in the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine in August 2020. Photo: Maksym Others report shorter waiting times, with some Ukrainians spending just a day or two in the camps before being filtered and traveling to Russia. A 29-year-old couple, Igor and Valentina from Mariupol, report that they are filtered within six hours of their arrival in Nikolske. “The fact that my wife was nine months pregnant at the time and we had to get to the hospital as soon as possible probably helped speed things up,” says Igor. You have to tell them that you want to stay and make a living in Russia and then they will leave you alone Maksym The Ukrainians who later fled to Georgia avoided the alleged extensive forced deportations to Russian cities. A woman, Zhanna, said her family slipped out of the back door of a filtration center unnoticed after hearing a police officer say she, her husband and their young son would be deported to a Russian island near Japan. With only immigration cards, not filter papers, Zhanna and her family traveled by bus from Novoazovsk to Taganrog, Russia. From Taganrog, they traveled by train to Vladikavkaz and crossed into Georgia by minibus across the border at Kazbegi. Subscribe to the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7 p.m. BST Others say informing officers of specific plans to go to a particular Russian city was enough to allow them to take their own route to Russia and then to Georgia. “You have to tell them you want to stay and make a living in Russia, then they will leave you alone,” says Maksym. Most buses carrying filtered Ukrainians from the DNR to Russia end up in Taganrog. There, most people buy bus or train tickets to Rostov-on-Don, from where they can arrange their transportation. Those coming to Georgia travel south to Vladikavkaz before crossing into Georgia via the mountainous border. Even when they reach the Russian border, their exit is not guaranteed. Men usually come out of the queue and are interrogated, their phones are examined. One man, Petya, said he was forced to pay a bribe to Russian border guards in exchange for an exit stamp. Many of the Ukrainians who are now in Tbilisi are devoting time until they can return to their homeland in Ukraine. “My godmother is still in Mariupol and she sent me photos with crosses stuck on the ground everywhere. “The graves are even in our backyards,” says Olena. “I want to go home, but that means that somewhere in Ukraine is not occupied by Russians.”
