Russia Builds Mass Filtration Camps in Volga Region Under Guise of Children’s Camps

Large-scale construction of filtration camps has been launched in Russia’s Volga region under the guise of children’s summer camps. These are quickly assembled modular houses, more like barracks, that will accommodate hundreds of “visitors.”

This was reported by the National Resistance Center of Ukraine.

Filtration camps, also referred to as concentration camps, are camps used by Russian forces to register, interrogate, and detain Ukrainian citizens in regions under temporary Russian occupation before deporting them to Russia as part of forced population transfers. Filtration camp detainees undergo a system of security checks and personal data collection.

According to the statement, recently there has been a tightening of filtration measures in the temporary occupied territories of Ukraine. Particularly stringent checks are observed in the southern Ukraine.

In June 2022, Deputy Head of the US Mission to the OSCE Courtney Austrian has reported that at least 18 filtration camps have been identified along both sides of the Ukraine-Russia border, and said that Kremlin probably prepared them even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to Austrian, these camps are located in schools, sports centers and cultural institutions in some parts of Ukraine and Russia.

A report by The New York Times stated that people who have passed through these camps and were able to leave Russia have told about cruel interrogations, beatings, torture and disappearances of people suspected of links to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. After passing through filtration procedures, Ukrainians were sent to different cities across Russia, including regions near China and Japan.

Deputy Head of the US Mission to the OSCE called the filtration process “Stalinist” and noted that this is the latest example of Russia’s long history of using mass deportations and depopulation to subjugate and control the population.