Country: Russia

Group: Ukrainians

Date Finalized: 3/29/2022

Team: Anusha Natarajan (lead), Hannah Goldman, Alicia Hernandez, Jacob Kebe

Content Warning: n/a

Approximate Time Period: 1932-present

Substantial evidence suggests Ukrainians in Russia have been subjected to forced labor. During the Soviet Union era, Stalin enacted a law to prevent people from stealing “socialist property” (typically food) and the punishment was a death sentence or ten years of imprisonment. It is estimated that from 1932-33 8,728 residents of the Donbas in easter Ukraine were subjected to imprisonment and forced labor (Kuromiya, 2003). More recently, there have been reports of false arrests and forced labor of Ukrainians in Russian-controlled territories (Rudenko, 2021), as “Russian authorities are ramping up the use of prison labor despite echoes of the country’s Stalinist experience” (Abarinov, 2014). However, Russia has denied or not confirmed the truth of these cases. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has opened up new questions about forced labor of Ukrainians. In February, the US reported Russian plans to torture, detain, and force into labor captured Ukrainians and this month there have been widespread reports of Ukrainians being forced into Russia for the purpose of laboring for the state of Russia (Forrest, 2022).

Data Quality: Data quality for the forced labor among Ukrainians in Russia is 3/3 due to the strong amount of evidence gathered from several news sources and research articles.

Sources

  1. Abarinov, V. (2014, August 11). Russia’s Boom Business: Forced Labor in Prisons. RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. Retrieved March 22, 2022, from https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-prison-labor/26525003.html
  2. Forrest, A.. (2022, March 21). Truss condemns ‘abduction and deportation’ of Ukrainians into Russia. The Independent. Retrieved March 22, 2022, from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/vladimir-putin-russia-liz-truss-volodymyr-zelensky-tass-b2040154.html
  3. Kuromiya, H. (2003). Freedom and Terror in the Donbas: A Ukrainian-Russian Borderland, 1870s-1990s. Cambridge University Press.
  4. Rudenko, Y. (2021, December 24). “F*cking execute her!” Torture, forced labor, one bottle of water a day: How a Ukrainian woman hostage survived the prisons of Russia-occupied Donbas. Euromaidan Press. https://euromaidanpress.com/2021/12/24/ukrainian-woman-hostage-in-russian-occupied-donbas-tells-of-torture-forced-labor/
  5. Ukrainians in Russia. Wikipedia. (2022, March 21). Retrieved March 22, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainians_in_Russia