GRANTEE
In March 2022, witness testimonies revealed the existence of “filtration camps” where Ukrainians forcibly deported to the Russian Federation were subjected to the extraction of biometric and user data. This process involved photographing, fingerprinting, and device checks, with the data immediately cross-referenced and correlated; those deemed “suspicious” by Russian soldiers faced illegal detention. Initially operating primarily in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, the Russian-established “filtration” infrastructure gradually formalized into a system of legal restrictions regulating the mobility of Ukrainian citizens both within Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories and in the Russian Federation itself.
This project aims to map the temporal and spatial evolution of the filtration infrastructure by analyzing the networks of activist-volunteer relations that emerged in urgent response to the deportations of Ukrainian citizens to the Russian Federation. It seeks to explore how the Russian infrastructures of filtration arrest and distribute the deportation flow of Ukrainians through the Russian-occupied and Russian territories, thus reflecting broader practices of governance and control of the population under the Russian regime.