Journalists of the Schema (Schemes) project of the Ukrainian section of Radio Svoboda determined the exact location of the filtration camp. It was run in the town of Narowla in Belarus by Russians.
Russian soldiers established a filtration camp in the city of Narovla in the Gomel region in the spring of 2022. “It has become a place of illegal detention and torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians, including children,” reported the Ukrainian section of Radio Svoboda.
Narovla is located on the banks of the Pripyat River Belarus70 km from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant – already in Ukraine.
Journalists of the Schema project reached Ukrainians detained in this place. Sergeant Anastazja Matrushchenko recalled how a soldier of “non-Slavic appearance” approached a group of prisoners and threatened them, saying: “you won't live to see tomorrow.”
Civilians who lived in towns occupied by Russian forces were also sent to Narowla, including: in the Kiev region. Testimonies about what this place was like are collected by social organizations and lawyers who represent injured Ukrainians in courts. “Some human rights defenders call this camp one of the most cruel in terms of treatment of prisoners. Detainees were interrogated and beaten, and recordings with their participation were used in Russian propaganda recordings,” Radio Svoboda reported.
Entry about the filtration camp on the Schema project website Radio Swoboda
On the premises of a state-owned facility
The exact location of the camp was determined by journalists of the Schema project of the Ukrainian section of Radio Svoboda in cooperation with colleagues from the Belarusian Investigation Center, the Belarusian section of Radio Svoboda, as well as with the support of the group of investigative journalists The Reckoning Project and the hacker group Cyberpartisans.
After comparing video recordings with satellite photos, they discovered that the camp was located on the property of a Belarusian state plant controlled by Alyaksandr Lukashenko's Pripyat Alliance.
After returning from captivity, the Ukrainians only remembered that they were held in Belarus, but they could not say where it was. They only reported that it was a place “similar to a collective farm”.
Ukrainian journalists reported that at the beginning of the armed invasion, Narovla turned into a “node of the Russian army”, which brought equipment and soldiers to the neighboring country, therefore determining the exact location of the camp was extremely difficult.
Ukrainian prisoners of war return home. Archival recording Coordination staff for dealing with prisoners of war/Facebook
Footage from a Russian soldier's camera
As part of the investigation, a recording from a Russian soldier's camera found in the Kiev region, shot on the morning of February 24, 2022, on the first day of the armed invasion, was also published for the first time. The recording shows a column of Russian troops entering Ukraine from Belarus near Chernobyl.
The soldiers visible in this video could later be seen in a propaganda reportage on Russian television from the Narovla filtration camp.
According to defenders human rights some Ukrainians who passed through this camp are still in captivity, including: in Russian penal colonies.
Main photo source: Google Maps, Telegram