A Russian government decree published on a Kremlin website shows Moscow made an emergency order last month to move nearly 100,000 people from the war zone to regions including Siberia, the North Caucasus, the Far East and even the Arctic Circle.
Destinations where Ukrainians are being sent include the heavily militarised republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, where Russia has fought insurgencies, and Sakhalin oblast in the Far East, which contains the Kuril Islands contested by Japan.
A clip from Russian police video which claims to show Ukrainian’s from Donetsk having their fingerprints and photographs taken in Vladivostok beneath a portrait of Vladimir Putin. The caption says police are ‘helping them to obtain the necessary documents’.
The proclamation suggests people are also being sent to Magadan on Russia’s east coast and to the Arctic port of Murmansk. None are being sent to Russia’s major cities of Moscow or St Petersburg, according to the document.