By Galina Korol | 2024-09-05

KYIV -- Russia's inability to defend its own territory is causing an unwanted influx of panicked Russian civilians into occupied Ukraine.

More than 130,000 inhabitants have fled Kursk province, Russia, since Ukrainian forces launched an offensive in the province August 6, Russian news agency RBC reported late last month, citing acting governor Alexei Smirnov.

The incursion came more than two years after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"People who can leave are trying to do so," Roman Bochkala, a Ukrainian war correspondent who has been covering the incursion from the scene, told Kontur.

"Everything is being done under the supervision of the FSB [Federal Security Service]," he said.

Evacuation destinations are not publicly known, but the refugees "definitely are not being taken to Moscow or St. Petersburg," he added.

Destination: occupied southern Ukraine

As of August 20, Ukraine controlled 1,263 sq. kilometers and 93 towns in Kursk province, the Ukrainian outlet Glavcom reported August 20, citing Ukrainian military commander in chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.

As Ukraine's forces keep advancing into Russian territory, Smirnov announced plans to relocate his constituents to Russian-occupied territory in Zaporizhzhia province, Ukraine.

He said he had spoken to Yevgeny Balitsky, the Kremlin-installed governor of the Russian-occupied part of Zaporizhzhia province.

Balitsky "offered as accommodation sanatoriums and guesthouses on the shore of the Sea of Azov extending from Berdyansk to Kyrylivka," Smirnov wrote on Telegram on August 13.

"Soon the first transport vehicles will be equipped to deliver [refugees] to temporary housing in Zaporizhzhia province," he added.

Smirnov also may have received an offer to place residents of Kursk province in Kerch, occupied Crimea.

That proposal came from "a representative of the regional chapter of the Red Cross in Kerch city," Denys Chistikov, deputy permanent representative of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Crimea, told Kontur.

"No mass transfer has been documented yet, but there have been reports that [refugees] have shown up in Sevastopol and Yevpatoria," said Chistikov, referring to Crimean cities.

"Up to 100 people from Kursk province have arrived after the events there," he told Kontur.

Plans allegedly are afoot to resettle newcomers at convalescent facilities, Suspilne.Krim reported.

"We were told [August 13] that ... most likely families with children will be vacationing here starting with the next shift [of vacationers]. Vacancies will be allocated for them," Suspilne.Krim reported on August 15, quoting an unidentified resident of Crimea.

Violating international law

Using the Red Cross to replace the population of occupied territory like Crimea with newcomers amounts to a blatant violation of the law by both Moscow and the organization, said Chistikov.

"Unfortunately, the regional chapter of the Red Cross [in Kerch] has done this sort of thing before, to collect volunteer aid that was allegedly intended for civilians, but there have been cases where it used this aid to meet the needs of Russian troops," he said.

Some displaced Kursk families likely came to occupied Ukraine on their own after seeing invitations on TV from the Kremlin's collaborators, said Viktor Dudukalov, deputy chairman of the Berdyansk district council in exile.

Those families are living on properties that euphemistically were "nationalized," which in reality the occupiers seized from local residents, he told Kontur.

This is not the first time that occupation authorities have planned to move Russians to the area, he said.

"When there was flooding in Orenburg province [in April] ... [Russian authorities] organized a mass relocation," Dudukalov said. "They sent out several trainloads from Orenburg province ... of flood victims."

Colonization, not evacuation

Even isolated cases of planting Russians on occupied Ukrainian territory break the law, say analysts.

Smirnov's operation is "illegal colonization" under international law, Kateryna Rashevska of Kyiv, a lawyer for the Regional Center for Human Rights, told Kontur.

She cited Article 49 of the Geneva Convention on Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War: "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

"Since 2014 Russia has consistently and deliberately carried out a policy of violently altering the demographic makeup of the occupied territories of Ukraine," she said.

"Now the new colonizers in Ukrainian territory will be Russians from Kursk province, whom their war reached," she said.

With this gambit, Moscow is seeking to put down "poisonous Russian roots" in Ukraine, she said.

Rashevska called for an appropriate response from Ukraine and the international community to the illegal colonization.

"We need to respond because these kinds of 'evacuations' will inevitably become a weapon the Russians will use to 'deter' Ukraine from pushing the war into Russian provinces," she warned.