Russia is preparing large-scale deportations from the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories to Siberia under the cover of a new state initiative, United24 wrote, citing a November 13 assessment by Ukraine’s National Resistance Center (CNR), as reported in Hungary by Index.
Csatlakozz a Telegram-csatornánkhoz!
According to the article, Moscow has announced a roughly 8.65-billion-dollar “Siberian Development Program,” which it presents as an industrial and economic project. Ukrainian officials, however, warn that behind the public rhetoric lies a plan to forcibly relocate residents of the occupied regions.
According to CNR information, the “occupation administrations” have already begun the first phase: schools, hospitals and public utilities are receiving confidential instructions to identify employees “suitable for long-term deployment to Russia’s Far East.”
Local workers are being pressured to name individuals “without family ties,” who can therefore be removed more easily and with less resistance.
Ukrainian authorities argue that the initiative repeats Soviet-era “organized recruitment” methods that were historically used to deport entire communities, including the resettlement of Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians and Chechens.
The pattern — passport “re-registration,” forced “assignments,” state relocation programs and demographic manipulation — points to a coordinated effort aimed at depopulating the “occupied territories” and remolding them in line with Moscow’s interests.
Previously, Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General submitted evidence to the United Nations documenting more than 190,000 war crimes committed by Russia since the start of the war. These crimes were described as part of a “planned state policy aimed at the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.”
The report notes that the international community is watching Russia’s actions in the occupied territories with growing concern, as forced relocation can serve as an instrument of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
On this issue I cannot, and do not wish to, pass final judgment, but I will offer a few remarks:
- The war broke out more than three and a half years ago; since then, Ukrainians in the occupied territories have long had the opportunity to move to Ukraine proper or elsewhere in the West.
Only at the very beginning did the occupation advance rapidly; today, Putin’s forces are slowly capturing largely depopulated settlements, places where perhaps only a few persistent Russian-speaking residents remain. And there is unlikely to be much trouble with them. - If Putin and his circle truly aimed at the physical destruction of the Ukrainian population (in the occupied territories), I don’t think they would be overly delicate or picky about the means.
The fact that, nearly four years into the war, the number of civilians killed in air strikes has remained relatively low actually suggests the opposite. This remains true even though every human life is of great value, and each loss is a tragedy. - As for war crimes, sadly, wherever there is war, there are war crimes as well — and that can be true on both sides. Most recently, a video was uploaded to the internet showing a drone killing a kneeling civilian praying for his life.
