Putin officials coordinate "filtration" operations in Ukraine – US representative in UN

OLHA HLUSHCHENKO – THURSDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER 2022, 05:37

The United States of America said during the UN Security Council meeting that officials from the Administration of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin are overseeing and coordinating filtration operations on the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.

Source: Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Representative to the United Nations, at a UN Security Council meeting quoted by Ukrinform

Quote: "And I want to be clear. The United States has information that officials from Russia’s Presidential Administration are overseeing and coordinating these filtration operations.

[…] the forcible transfer or deportation of protected persons from occupied territories, to the territory of the occupier, is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians, and constitutes a war crime."

Details: Thomas-Greenfield noted that estimates indicate that Russian authorities have interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens from their homes to Russia, often to isolated regions in the Far East.

The goal is to prepare "for an attempted annexation" of Ukrainian territory and conduct sham referendums in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.

"Of course, we will never recognize any efforts by Russia to change Ukraine’s borders by force. We must hold the perpetrators of these atrocities to account. We must respond as an international community – an international community that still respects the UN Charter," Thomas-Greenfield stressed.

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