“What the occupiers are doing today is familiar to the older generation, who saw the horrific events of World War II, when the Nazis forcibly captured people,” said Mariupol mayor Vadym Boychenko.
“It is hard to imagine that in the 21st century people will be forcibly deported to another country.”
Up to 4,500 people may have been taken from Mariupol across the nearby Russian border by forces loyal to Moscow, Pyotr Andryuschenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, told The New York Times in an interview.
Officials in Moscow…said on Friday that thousands of Ukrainians had “expressed a desire to escape” to Russia.
