"Preparation for deportation". Why are the Russian authorities in the occupied territories of Ukraine encouraging the residents of the south to spy on each other?

The Russian occupying forces are expanding their network of informers in the occupied part of the Kherson region. This was announced on July 29 by the Center of National Resistance. It noted that Russian troops and occupation administrations are trying to attract a large number of local loyalists to identify citizens who have a strong pro-Ukrainian position or support the Defense Forces of Ukraine. In particular, the Russian special services introduced a system of gathering information through "denunciation" and "reporting of suspicious actions or statements". The security forces will continue to use the information obtained for administrative and other types of pressure in the region.

In addition, in the occupied Genichesk in the Kherson region, the Russian army intensified its repression against the local population. This was reported by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on July 11. Getting "to the basement" is now many times easier, warns the General Staff.

The local population, which cooperates with the Russian occupation authorities in order to gain favor, constantly slanders the citizens, who are then subjected to groundless checks, the General Staff reports. The Russian army is also threatening to deport the local population to Siberia and confiscate their property if they do not have a Russian passport.

Earlier, on June 16, the General Staff announced that in the occupied part of the Kherson region, the Russian army continues to kidnap pro-Ukrainian residents, as well as opening new torture camps. According to information from the Ukrainian army, the Russian occupiers set up one of these torture chambers in the high school in Veliki Kopani. In the gymnasium of the educational institution, units of the FSB of Russia conduct interrogations. The prisoners are kept in harsh, inhumane conditions and are subjected to torture, the General Staff announced.

"Collection of applications for further deportation of people"

Serhiy Khlan, deputy of the Kherson regional council, told "Novosti iz Azov" for what purpose Russian security forces are encouraging residents of the occupied Kherson region to report each other.

"The purpose of collecting applications is to identify those people who categorically refuse to take a Russian passport in order to deport them in the future. The occupiers call the time of deportation the new year," said Khlan.

Khlan told how Russian special services "process" applications from local residents ahead of an important date for the occupiers - the Single Voting Day. Regional elections will be held in Russia on September 10, which, contrary to international norms, will also be attempted to be held in the occupied Ukrainian territories.

 

"According to these reports, the occupiers come to people or call them to their illegal law enforcement agencies and simply confront them with the fact: "If you don't get a Russian passport in the near future, we will deport you," Khlan describes the situation.

According to him, during these operations, the occupiers are looking for locals who could be accused of participating in the resistance movement.

"This denunciation system also works to arrest people with a pro-Ukrainian position, to accuse them of being part of the partisan movement. They devise some partisan action and arrest people for that action," says Khlan.

"FSB employees write reports and pretend to be secret witnesses"

The head of the Crimean Human Rights Group, Olga Skripnik, says that at the beginning of the occupation of the peninsula, colleagues from the Crimean Humanities University wrote reports against her. They called her an "American agent".

Knowing the Crimean cases, Skripnik tells how the system of falsification of criminal cases created by the Russian security forces was organized. First of all, we are talking about the actions of the FSB and Center "E" - the structure for combating extremism at the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia.

"FSB employees, for example, write a report themselves that a person allegedly cooperates with the SBU or the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. Based on that, the search is carried out. Then, when the lawyer tries to find out what triggered the case, it turns out that the report was actually written by an FSB officer," says Skripnik.

According to the human rights activist, "secret witnesses" appear during investigations and trials against defamed people. According to her experience, these are again the same FSB officers.

"You (the accused or his lawyer - ed.) cannot see the secret witness, you cannot ask him questions. But, in fact, the entire criminal case is based on his testimony and reports. Plus illegal interrogation by institutions connected to the FSB," emphasizes Skripnik.

In 2016, the Russian authorities introduced criminal liability for "failure to report a crime". According to this article, a person can be sentenced for not informing a law enforcement officer about the preparation of a criminal offense or its occurrence. Skripnik says that the occupiers use this article to put pressure on people and force them to cooperate.

"The security forces are inventing tools to force people to write these reports. And if it doesn't work, then they write it themselves. For me, this is an argument in favor of the fact that people, after all, do not write indictments en masse", summarizes the head of the Crimean Human Rights Group.

How to search for "saboteurs, spies and informers" in the occupied territories?

Ivan Stupak, a military expert and former employee of the Main Administration of the SBU, believes that the units of the Russian special services in the occupied parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions were created "in an emergency regime". In Crimea, on the contrary, during the nine years of occupation, they established a powerful and extensive network of informers.

 

"If we rank, according to the seriousness of security and counterintelligence support, Crimea is in first place, Donetsk and Lugansk are in second place, and Kherson and Zaporozhye regions are in third place, where the Russians managed to dig in and hunt down Ukrainians," said Stupak.

According to Stupak, the informants of the Russian special services in the occupied parts of Kherson Oblast and Zaporozhye Oblast are concentrated in educational institutions and "local government" bodies.

"They observe people there: who comes, what they say, what's the mood, are there any Ukrainian symbols," says Stupak.

The column describes how raids are carried out on the newly occupied territories.

"When they are looking for Ukrainian saboteurs, spies, counterspies or people who work for them, conditionally, in the Kherson region, they surround the village. They park two or three cars at the entrance to the village, two or three cars at the exit from the village, outside the perimeter and move around: house by house, house by house, barn by barn. They open wells, look for traces of wet earth: "Ah, wet earth." What's there? You buried something there." - People's documents are checked: "No documents - do you have a tattoo? Of course - in the garage. That's how they filter the whole village," says a former SBU official.

Stupak warns residents of the occupied south about possible provocations and "justifications" by Russian special services.

"Maybe there is some provocateur who says: 'Let's go to Ukraine, let's blow someone up.' And the man agrees, he says: "Of course, let's blow it up" - and that's it, they are already calling out that so-and-so initiated the attack, the FSB is working - the person has been arrested," explains Stupak.

"It is possible to create conditions under which people become executioners"

According to Russian opposition politician Gennady Gudkov, the Kremlin uses the same methods of pressure on the population in the occupied territories as in Russia itself. The retired FSB colonel told about it in an interview for "Novosti iz Priazovje".

"Denunciations are an accompanying phenomenon of the establishment of a regime. The more brutal the regime, the more brutal the method it uses, the more people agree to work with it to secure themselves. Therefore, it is possible to create conditions under which people become executioners and scoundrels. The fact that Putin's regime created the conditions for exactly that, you don't need a fortune teller to know why they are doing it," Gudkov believes.