Almost 100,000 Ukrainian refugees have been sent to resettle in regions across eastern Russia by President Vladimir Putin, according to documents seen by The Independent.
The Kremlin ordered that 95,739 civilians from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions be moved thousands of miles away from their homes to areas including Siberia and the Arctic Circle in Russia last month.
In a decree, seen by The Independent, Moscow said it “approved the distribution” of citizens.
The latest report comes after the US embassy in Kyiv claimed Russian forces were removing thousands of Ukrainian children and taking them to Russia.
Last month, the embassy wrote on Twitter that 2,389 Ukrainian children from Donetsk and Luhansk, in the disputed Donbas region, had been “illegally removed”, citing the Ukrainian foreign ministry.