Deportation From the Occupation

The 2023 Presidential Decree equated residents of the occupied Ukrainian territories who did not obtain Russian citizenship with foreigners. According to another decree, which takes effect in March 2025, Ukrainian citizens living in Russia “without legal grounds” must legalize their status — for example, by obtaining a passport or a residence permit — by September 10. Otherwise, they must leave voluntarily — or they will be deported.

In reality, Russia is already deporting residents of the occupied territories who refused to obtain a Russian passport and are deemed to “pose a threat to national security.” IStories has uncovered several cases in which Ukrainians were left at the Russian-Georgian border with orders banning them from entering Russia for several decades.

Threat to national security

In March 2024, 50-year-old Elena was brought to the border between Georgia and Russia at Verkhny Lars [Zemo Larsi in Georgian]. The journey from Melitopol in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast took almost a full day by car. She and another deported woman were guarded by three Interior Ministry officers. At the border, Elena was handed her documents, which had been confiscated during a search six months earlier, along with a deportation order. The order was signed by Konstantin Razygrin, head of the Migration Department of the Russian Interior Ministry in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. It stated that the FSB had banned her, a Ukrainian citizen, from entering the Russian Federation until 2045.

Elena was deported to the border with Georgia from her native village in Zaporizhzhia Oblast after six months in Russian security forces’ captivity, suffering abuse and uncertainty

The grounds for Elena’s expulsion — that same presidential decree that allows for the deportation of residents of occupied territories if they have not accepted Russian citizenship and “pose a threat to national security.” That is, they “advocate violent overthrow of the constitutional order,” “plan terrorist acts,” “encroach on public order,” or simply participate in “unauthorized gatherings or rallies.”

The village of Yakymivka in Melitopol Raion, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, where Elena lived, was occupied in the first days of the invasion. She immediately resigned from the tax service, where she had worked before the war, to avoid cooperating with the occupation authorities. Neither she nor her family obtained Russian passports.

About a year and a half after the invasion, someone knocked on Elena’s door.

“I go outside, and there are about 12 people, all armed with assault rifles. They said: ‘We received information that you are pro-Ukrainian.’ They told me I was suspected of terrorism.”

Elena was presented with a search warrant. In her apartment, the security forces found a certificate for a medal she received for the 15th anniversary of the AFU — from 2001 to 2006, Elena worked as chief of finance at the military enlistment office. “And then they started: ‘You’ve been recruited by the SBU,’” the woman recalls. “I told them: ‘Why would they need me?’ I found it funny. I never thought that would be the reason for my detention.”

Elena spent the next 45 days in captivity. At first, she was kept in solitary confinement. She recalls that the room was hot, rats ran around, the lights were always on, there were no windows, and it was impossible to tell the time of day. Food was brought once every three days, and she was allowed to wash for the first time only after a month. From neighboring cells, Elena heard the screams of other abductees being tortured by Russian security forces. In solitary, Elena could not take it and tried to end her life.

“I tried to cut my veins, but then I saw the blood and thought, what if tomorrow we’re freed and I won’t see my daughter or grandson? That sobered me up. I realized I would survive, I would get out of this hell any way I could.”

In September 2023, Elena was released — and immediately detained again, allegedly for violating curfew. This happens to many abductees who are not officially charged with anything, says Natalia, a representative of the project Vikradeni Melitopoltsi [“Kidnapped Melitopol Residents”], which monitors abductions in Melitopol: “They take a person, try them, sentence them to 25–30 days. They release them in the evening, the traffic police are waiting outside. The person is immediately detained for curfew violation, taken to court. Sometimes they don’t even bring them into court anymore. The escort comes in with documents, the judge signs the arrest, and again it’s 15 or 25 days in detention. And so it goes in circles.”

In total, Elena spent almost five months in various detention centers. After her release, an investigator demanded that she sign a paper stating she was refusing Russian citizenship “for political reasons” and requesting to be deported. After Elena refused, she was again placed under administrative arrest for 20 days, then put in a car and taken to the border with Georgia. Once in the country, Elena called her daughter, who found fellow villagers from Yakymivka. They met her, and after a few days she took a bus through Türkiye to Zaporizhzhia. The months in captivity had greatly damaged her health.

“The Georgians don’t know what to do with them”

The deportation of residents from occupied territories is not just the expulsion of undesirables, but a violation of international law. “This is directly prohibited by the Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute. That’s why all these handcuffed removals to Verkhny Lars from the occupation are a crime, no matter what they call it or what papers they write,” explains Alexey Ladukhin, a human rights activist from Every Human Being.

Previously, Ukrainians were deported through the Vasylivka checkpoint in Zaporizhzhia Oblast: people had to walk across dozens of kilometers of combat zone to reach the Ukrainian checkpoint. The Russian-appointed head of the region, Yevgeny Balitsky, said that those deported were people who “in one way or another did not support the Special Military Operation, insulted the flag, the anthem of Russia, the president of the Russian Federation.”

“We had to do something with these people, these families — and these are large families — so we gave them the opportunity to leave. Some were forcibly evicted — they were handed a ribbon, the eviction order was read, and they were sent off,” he explained.

At the end of 2022, this checkpoint stopped operating, and since at least 2023, the authorities have deported Ukrainians via the Russian-Georgian border. At that time, the publication Mediazona reported on a group of former prisoners from Kherson stranded in the buffer zone between the Russian checkpoint Verkhny Lars and the Georgian Dariali. In the fall of 2022, as Russia retreated from Kherson, it evacuated them from Ukrainian penal colonies, as well as thousands of other convicts, Mediazona wrote. They served out their sentences, handed down by Ukrainian courts, in Russian colonies before being expelled.

Now, Russia is using Georgia to deport residents of the occupied regions who, for various reasons, appear “undesirable,” says Natalia from Vikradeni Melitopoltsi.

“Some are warned. They come and say: ‘You will be deported. You must be ready by such-and-such a date, we’ll come for you with documents,’” she says. Some are deported immediately after detention or from so-called basements, or from unofficial prisons set up by Russian security forces in the occupation.

In 2024 and 2025, Vikradeni Melitopoltsi recorded 17 cases of deportations to Georgia, but the real figure may be higher. The Russian side does not disclose data on the number of Ukrainians expelled from the occupied territories. As of publication, IStories had not received a response from the Georgian Interior Ministry.

Russia cannot deport people to Ukrainian-controlled territory — the countries no longer have official border crossings, explains Katya, a representative of Volunteers Tbilisi. The Georgian border is the closest one that can be reached from the occupied south of Ukraine. In addition, Georgia accepts residents of the occupied territories even without foreign passports (with internal documents), which Russian authorities take advantage of.

Since the start of the war, Georgian authorities have been very lenient toward Ukrainians without documents, says a representative of IStories at one of the largest organizations helping refugees: “They let Ukrainians in everywhere — not only at Lars. Also at the airports in Batumi, Tbilisi.”

However, the source doubts there is any agreement between Russian and Georgian authorities regarding deportations through the Russian-Georgian border: “In some cases, for example, with former prisoners, the Georgian Interior Ministry has acknowledged that this is a problem for them. Georgia is unhappy and does not welcome such [deportation] practices… But the Georgians simply don’t know what to do with them.”

“You're facing 25 years. You won’t see the light of day”

In the spring of 2022, Melitopol resident Sevil sent her 17-year-old daughter to the part of Ukraine free from occupation, while she stayed behind to care for her elderly, nearly bedridden mother-in-law. At some point, Sevil discovered the Telegram channel of the civilian resistance movement Zhovta Strichka [Yellow Ribbon in Ukrainian] — and began cooperating with them.

“I would take yellow ribbons and, against city backdrops — for example, a park or a square recognizable as Melitopol — make photos. Then I’d send them to the channel administrator, and they would distribute them — showing that Melitopol is not Russian but pro-Ukrainian, and that people [with such views] are there, just hiding and afraid.”

Sevil was identified by footage from city cameras.

In February 2024, she was seized while going to the market — to shop and take a few photos. She had hidden a ribbon in her glove. Sevil had a sack put over her head and was taken for interrogation to a place where “the wind blew, it was drafty, as if there were no windows or doors.”

Sevil recounts her exchange with one of the soldiers:

— Cold?

— Yes, it’s cold.

— Well, don’t worry, we’ll warm you up with electricity [electroshock] now.

During the interrogations, they tried to get Sevil to name the channel administrators and other local activists. Later, she was repeatedly arrested — allegedly for violating curfew, as happened to Elena, who was deported after six months of ordeal in detention. Sevil was released after a month and a half in custody, told to “keep her head down and stay out of trouble.” In June 2024, the Melitopol Interdistrict Court fined her 30 thousand rubles for “discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” (the court ruling is at IStories disposal).

Sevil paid the fine, and after that “things quieted down and no one bothered her.”

At the beginning of February 2025 — exactly a year after her first arrest — men in balaclavas came to her house. They identified themselves as the migration service and told her that she would be deported in a week. Sevil does not know why the deportation was delayed so long. By then, her former mother-in-law, whom she had been caring for, had died of cancer. “Maybe they were waiting for ‘the old lady to drop dead any day now.’ Though that would be almost too human for them,” the woman reflects.

In the deportation document that Sevil was shown but not given, it stated that she was being deported for discrediting the Russian Armed Forces, and that she was banned from entering Russia for 45 years — until 2069.

Sevil and another Ukrainian couple, handcuffed and escorted by eight guards, were taken to the border with Georgia at Verkhny Lars. Sevil had only her internal passport. According to her, the Georgian border guards “started getting pushy,” saying they had no documents confirming the deportation. After several hours, they were finally let through, and Sevil reached Tbilisi, where volunteers had booked her a place in a hostel. Within a week, she obtained what is known as a white passport at the Ukrainian consulate in Georgia and immediately returned to Ukraine to her daughter.

The white passport is an important document that allows people to return to Ukraine. It replaces a foreign passport, which since February 2023 residents of the occupied territories cannot obtain at the consulate without a certificate confirming they remain Ukrainian citizens. Such a certificate can only be obtained from the migration authorities in the occupied territories.

Sevil believes that not having a Russian passport helped her avoid charges of treason.

“I managed it so that there was no need [to get a Russian passport], and I certainly had no desire. I’m not a pensioner. I don’t have young children to enroll in kindergarten or school. Thank God, I didn’t need to go to the hospital during that time.”

By the time she was arrested, according to Sevil, there were only a handful of people left in Melitopol without Russian passports.

“One took a Russian passport — no one bothers him”

“Not only have they taken everything away, left us destitute in our old age, but they also broke up the family,” is how 55-year-old Ivan from Zaporizhzhia Oblast describes the occupation. In the three years since the start of the full-scale war, his mother died, his apartment was taken over by Russian soldiers, and his car was destroyed by shrapnel during a strike. The dacha was ruined and looted.

Ivan served in the Ukrainian army from 2016 to 2019. He and his wife refused to obtain Russian passports as a matter of principle. Like others, he was repeatedly arrested for 20 days for “violating curfew.”

“They didn’t beat us, but there were constant shouts and threats. ‘We’ll throw you in a pit, we’ll torture you with electricity.’ They offered me a contract — said they’d issue a passport right away. I said I wouldn’t take the passport. I served with a guy who was taken before me. They held him for 40 days in Melitopol, released him, and he went and took a Russian passport. No one bothers him,” Ivan says.

Ivan was taken to Verkhny Lars in March 2025. He recalls how the guards escorting him threatened that soon the deportations would become mass: “You’re being taken in comfort now, but soon we’ll be transporting everyone who didn’t take a passport in paddy wagons. Putin signed a decree to deport all such [residents].”

“They really pressured those who didn’t get passports,” Elena confirms. “They kept stopping and harassing us constantly. My brother resisted for a long time. Security forces with covered faces came, beat him several times. That’s why almost everyone I know there now has a passport.”

In the two years since the “referendums” in the occupied regions, by the end of September 2024, more than 3.4 million Russian passports have been issued to residents of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk Oblasts, according to data from the Russian Interior Ministry. Ukraine has not published information on the results of forced passportization in the occupied territories.

Living under occupation without Russian passports was difficult even before the recent presidential decrees. A Russian passport is required to receive free medication. Since 2024, to receive medical care, residents of the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia Oblast must have a Russian medical insurance policy. Compensation for housing damaged by shelling is also only available to holders of Russian passports. Without a passport, it is impossible to receive social benefits, and employees of state enterprises are threatened with dismissal, according to a report by the Eastern Human Rights Group. Security forces come for those who refuse passports.

“It’s almost always the same scenario. People are told, ‘Either you play by our rules, or you’re part of the problem that we, the “liberators,” are fighting.’ They come with a search warrant, dig through your phone, and there’s always something in your messages,” says Katya from Volunteers Tbilisi.

Forced passportization violates international law. In May 2024, the UN Human Rights Committee issued a decision in the case of three Ukrainians who had served sentences in Crimea and were forcibly naturalized as Russian citizens after the annexation of the peninsula. The Committee recognized this as a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibiting discrimination based on national origin, and ordered the annulment of their Russian citizenship.

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Elena believes she was lucky to be deported. Her cellmates remain in captivity. Sevil also says she does not regret being deported.

“I later told my daughter: ‘All my life, I thought I knew what the phrase “animal fear” meant. Especially when, as a child, you did something bad and walked home afraid. But after what I went through there [during interrogations], I understood what animal fear really is — when the horror makes your insides, I think, just seize up with spasms,’” she says.

She hopes to return to her hometown — a free Melitopol — long before 2069.

Editor: Maria Zholobova

Featuring Aleksandr Atasuntsev