It’s a poisoned choice for many Ukrainians: Die under Russian bombs or flee to Russia. An AP investigation found that many refugees are forced to embark on a surreal journey into Russia, subjected to human rights abuses along the way.
“Now we are here ... we’re trying to return to a normal life somehow, to encourage ourselves to start our life from scratch,” she said. “If you survived , you deserve it and need to move forward, not stop.”
Ivan Zavrazhnov describes the terror of being in Russia and not knowing where he would wind up. A producer for a pro-Ukrainian television network in Mariupol, he made it through filtration only because officials never bothered to plug in his dead cell phone. He managed to escape, and ended up on the docked ferry Isabelle in the city of Narva in Estonia with about 2,000 other Ukrainians, nearly all of whom left Russia.
It never crossed her mind to delete her contacts. When a Russian soldier searched her phone, he stopped at the one listed as “Commander” and pulled her aside. Finally, the family reached the Russian city of Taganrog. When questioned by Russian officials about why they had left their hometown, the mother could no longer restrain herself.
She was told that evacuees in Russia would be seen as traitors and get a prison term of 10 years if they returned to Ukraine. She was finally set free in a prisoner exchange, and found her way back to Ukraine anyway. Eighty-year-old Valentina Bondarenko still doesn’t know what she signed. When soldiers in white armbands burst into the Mariupol basement, she climbed out of the window, kicking over the cup holding her dentures.
“There’s only one way open, which is to apply for Russian citizenship, submit an application, receive all the documents and when you get your passport you can go wherever you want,” they told her. “When you are there and they have the power and you’re basically in their hands, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Lokshina said. “So many people sign just because they are afraid.”For Ukrainians trying to escape, help often comes from an unexpected source: Russians.
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