AP spoke to dozens of Ukrainian refugees sent to Russia; many have no real choice and are victims of human rights abuse.
The idea for this deeply reported story emerged months ago when AP noticed Ukrainian refugees being sent to Russia — then disappearing. But with some 2 million Ukrainians thought to have ended up in Russia, AP journalists needed to interview dozens of people to get any kind of accurate picture.
The process of tracking down refugees was painstaking. A breakthrough came when investigative correspondent Lori Hinnant and producer Vasilisa Stepanenko interviewed displaced Ukrainians who had ended up on a ferry in Estonia. And resourceful staffers in Russia managed to find people still in the country, a real coup.
Dmitriy Zadoyanov, an evacuee from Mariupol, Ukraine, speaks during an interview with the AP in Tbilisi, Georgia, April 15, 2022. Zadoyanov had been sheltering in a Mariupol basement, exhausted and hungry, when Russians told him he could board a bus to either Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine or Rostov-on-Don in Russia. But the buses went only to Russia. There he and others escaped with the help of sympathetic Russian locals.
AP Photo / Shakh Aivazov
Dmitriy Zadoyanov, an evacuee from Mariupol, Ukraine, rests in Tbilisi, Georgia, April 17, 2022. Zadoyanov was tricked into evacuation to Russia, interrogated and offered money to denounce Ukraine on Russian television. He escaped to Georgia with the help of sympathetic Russian locals.
AP Photo / Shakh Aivazov
A family from Mariupol, Ukraine, arrives from Russia with their dog in Narva, Estonia, June 16, 2022, more than a month after they left their hometown. Some 2 million Ukranian have found themselves in Russia, many forcibly transferred.
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A family from Mariupol, Ukraine, speaks with a volunteer, left, in Narva, Estonia, June 16, 2022, after arriving from Russia with help from volunteers on both sides of the border.
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Ukrainian refugees arrive to get accommodations on the ferry Isabelle in Tallinn, Estonia, June 15, 2022. About 2,000 displaced Ukrainians live on the ferry.
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Marina Nosylenko stands with her two sons on the ferry Isabelle in Tallinn, Estonia, June 15, 2022. Nosylenko left Mariupol on May 26 and took the train to St. Petersburg, Russia, with her husband and three children. They left Russia as quickly as possible, making the journey to Estonia in three days.
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Valeriya Storozh, left, her husband Sergei, right, and son Konstantin, evacuees from Mariupol, Ukraine, speak to the AP in their room at the Sosnovy Bor sanatorium near Gavrilov-Yam, Yaroslavl region, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Moscow, April 12, 2022. Some Ukrainian evacuees stay in Russia by choice, or because they don’t have the resources to leave. The Storozh family wants to get the citizenship in Russia “to continue to live, to build a new life.”
AP Photo / Alexander Zemlianichenko
Lyudmila Alfyorova, left, an evacuee from Mariupol, Ukraine, and her daughter, Olga Zabelina, speak to the AP in their room at the Sosnovy Bor sanatorium near Gavrilov-Yam, Yaroslavl region, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Moscow, April 12, 2022. Zabelina and her family decided one day to get in their car under bombing and run away. “Attacks persisted, shells fell in houses, on people. The only car showed up in our district, I asked them to take me with them. We got in our car as well and left,” Zabelina said.
AP Photo / Alexander Zemlianichenko
Yelena Krylova, a former plant worker and evacuee from Mariupol, Ukariane, gestures as she speaks to the AP in her room at the Sosnovy Bor sanatorium near Gavrilov-Yam, Yaroslavl region, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Moscow, April 12, 2022. Krylova was evacuated from Mariupol with her husband and son. “We were glad just to leave. We didn’t ask where we were going, where we were going to be. At that moment, it was indifferent. We had to leave,” Krylova said. Krylova and her family are going to work at a local plant. The family also expects to get Russian citizenship soon.
AP Photo / Alexander Zemlianichenko
Ukrainian refugee Olena Zorina stands on a deck of the ferry Isabelle, where she is living, in Tallinn, Estonia, June 15, 2022. Zorina traveled with her husband and daughter from March 26 to May 1. They received help from Russian volunteers along the way.
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A bridge straddles Ivangorod, Russia, left, and a border crossing in Narva, Estonia, June 16, 2022.
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A Russian volunteer walks through Narva, Estonia, June 16, 2022. The tattoo artist, unnamed for his security, helps Ukrainians into Europe, making trips twice a week either to Finland or Estonia with them.
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Ukranian refugee Viktoria Kovalevska poses in Tallinn, Estonia, June 18, 2022. Kovalevska was evacuated from Mariupol, Ukraine, with her husband and two daughters. The family endured Russian “filtrations” and a freezing night in a suffocatingly crowded tent near mass graves. They eventually tapped into the network of Russian volunteers and left for Estonia; they now live in Tallinn.
AP Photo / Vasilisa Stepanenko
Evacuees from Mariupol, Ukraine, Sergei Mull, left; his wife, Daria Mull, center; and his sister’s daughter, Maria Bobrushova, sit together during an interview at the Sosnovy Bor sanatorium near Gavrilov-Yam, Yaroslavl region, Russia, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Moscow, April 12, 2022.
AP Photo / Alexander Zemlianichenko
Lyudmila Bolbad and her son, Gleb, evacuees from Mariupol, Ukraine, sit with their dog, Luna, in their hotel room in Khabarovsk, Russia, July 18, 2022. “Now we are here, deal with getting citizenship, have just gotten jobs, children in kindergarten and school. We’re trying to return to a normal life somehow, to encourage ourselves to start our life from scratch,” she said. “If you survived (the war), you deserve it and need to move forward, not stop.”
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Valentyna Bondarenko, a refugee from Mariupol, Ukraine, poses in Pyatigorsk, Russia, May 12, 2022. Bondarenko and 50 others from Mariupol were at the mercy of Russian officials, virtually stranded in a dormitory near the Georgia border, when her family in Ukraine enlisted volunteers to get her out of the country and back to Ukraine.
AP Photo
In all, AP spoke with 36 Ukrainians, most of them from the devastated city of Mariupol, all of whom were sent to Russia, including 11 still there and others now in Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Georgia, Ireland, Germany and Norway. The AP also drew on interviews with the Russian underground, video footage, Russian legal documents and Russian state media.
Conveying the diverse experiences of 36 people presented a challenge, but the team found common threads among their individual journeys. The balance between personal stories and the larger findings was masterful, humanizing the refugee situation throughout the mainbar story. Correspondent Cara Anna worked on finding both a man tricked into boarding a bus to Russia and his sister. Video producer Sophiko Megrelidze and colleagues in Georgia interviewed the man; his disturbing experience leads the piece. Investigative reporter Sarah El Deeb also contributed to the interviews and tracked where people were sent in Russia.
Ivan Zavrazhnov stands near a ferry where he is now living in Tallinn, Estonia. A producer for a pro-Ukrainian television network in Mariupol, he made it through a Russian-controlled filtration point only because officials never bothered to plug in his dead cell phone. He escaped to Belarus, then Poland, then Estonia, leaving Russia behind with great relief. Zavrazhnov described the terror of being in Russia and not knowing where he would wind up: “This is some kind of incomprehensible lottery — who decides where and what,” he said. “You understand that you are going, as it were, into the mouth of a bear ... an aggressor state, and you end up on this territory. ... I did not have the feeling that I was safe in Russia.”
AP Photo / Vasilisa Stepanenko
The investigation found that Ukrainians are indeed forced to embark on a surreal trip into Russia, subjected along the way to human rights abuses, processed through a series of what are known as filtration points where treatment ranges from interrogation and strip searches to being yanked aside and never seen again.
Illustrating the stories required a major team effort, with photographers in Estonia, Russia and Georgia and video journalists in the region contributing to the story which was packaged by Dario Lopez and Raghu Vadarevu.
The story also broke ground in tracing an aspect of the journeys that has hardly been reported: The chain of volunteers, including many Russians, who are helping Ukrainians escape. Two volunteers in Russia spoke with AP, despite the dangers. And almost all the Ukrainians who have left Russia described Russians who helped them along the way, demonstrating a strong vein of dissent in the country.
The Daily Beast wrote a story on the investigation, and the AP was widely cited by journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post and other media organizations on Twitter. The piece led AP for reader engagement on the day it published and was still near the top a week later.
For teamwork across borders that resulted in the most extensive and revealing investigation yet into the forcible transfers of Ukrainian refugees, Hinnant, Stepanenko, Anna, El Deeb and colleagues in Russia and Georgia earn AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.
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