As Ukraine gains back portions of its territory conquered by Russia, some Ukrainians are searching for lost friends and family, and learning that they were forcibly relocated to Russia.

Since the early months of Russia’s full-scale war, the Ukrainian government has been ordering civilians to evacuate Russian-occupied territory. But Russia has also been making Ukrainians move—not to safety, but to other Russian regions, some thousands of miles from Ukraine.

After conquering a Ukrainian region, Russian forces conduct screenings of locals and categorize many as “Nazis”—generally with zero evidence to justify the heinous label. Oleksandr, a civilian from Mariupol who gave only his first name to bbc News, was able to escape from Russian detainment. “If a person was suspected of being a ‘Ukrainian Nazi,’” he explained, “they took them to [Russian-occupied] Donetsk for further investigation or murder. It was very dangerous and risky. Any small doubt, any small resistance—and they could take you to the basements for interrogation and torture. Everybody was afraid to be taken to Donetsk.”

Oleksandr and his wife, Olena, were first detained at a center in Russian-occupied Mariupol where they were fingerprinted, photographed and interrogated. Their phones were confiscated and searched. Then the couple was placed on an evacuation list and given permission to board a bus. But it was clear to them that the buses were heading only deeper into Russia-controlled territory or across the border into Russia itself.

“Many buses of civilians go to Russian rather than Ukrainian territory,” Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boychenko, told bbc investigators.

Oleksandr and Olena managed to hire a private driver who could take them to a safer part of Ukraine. After a long and dangerous journey winding through fields, dirt roads and narrow paths—mapped out to avoid the myriad Russian checkpoints—the couple was able to board a train bound for Lviv, Ukraine.

However, Oleksandr and Olena’s story is a rare report. Most stories have not been told because the relocated Ukrainians—often children—have not been able to escape Russia. When Ukrainians do manage to get free, it is often after enduring months of custody in centers that survivors often liken to ghettos. These centers—formerly government buildings, police stations, hotels, sporting complexes or sanatoriums—are called “filtration camps.” Inside them, individuals report being beaten, humiliated and tortured. With the unsanitary conditions that breed disease combined with torture by Russian officials, death is a frequent result. If a person survives, he may be forcibly relocated to Russia.

Evidence even shows that Russia may have begun preparing to relocate Ukrainians to Russia before the war began. In the days leading up to the February 24 invasion, multiple Russian facilities near the border were instructed to discharge people to open accommodations and expect new arrivals. On February 19, the Russian Rostov region declared a state of emergency due to a “trend for increasing numbers of arriving people” from the Donbass region of Ukraine. Then on April 5, Russia legalized reimbursement to areas that accept Ukrainian “refugees.”

On July 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree that simplified the process for Ukrainians to obtain Russian citizenship. The law allowed for multiple Ukrainian children to be quickly adopted by new Russian parents. This occurred after the children were separated from their parents during filtration and were removed to children’s camps inside Russia.

An estimated 2.8 million Ukrainians have been displaced to Russia, according to a December 4 report from Ukraine’s Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights. Of these, the Ukraine government has been able to list by name 11,000 of them as missing children. At least 200,000 other children are believed to also be among those forcibly deported to Russia.

This is a cruel crime that the Russians are committing, and it is, by definition, genocide. According to Article 2 of the international law on genocide, genocide is any one of the following acts:

a) Killing members of the group

b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Russia’s brutality in its filtration camps and the number of displaced children is extreme enough to match the United Nations’ definition of genocide.

In his booklet The Prophesied ‘Prince of Russia,’ Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes, “Putin has a long pattern of diabolical evil on the level of Joseph Stalin. An abundance of fruits prove that.” Stalin was guilty of committing genocide in his Holodomor famine against Ukraine, and now Putin is following in his footsteps with his own system of genocide against the same country.

This is because Putin longs for every shred of power that Stalin once held. Putin famously called the fall of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.” And Mr. Flurry explains:

Given the dozens of millions of Soviet citizens who were imprisoned, persecuted and murdered under that authoritarian system, most of us would say the opposite! Putin not only mourns the ussr’s collapse—he is bent on rebuilding it and restoring the glory of imperial Russia!

This motivation drives most every geopolitical decision Vladimir Putin makes. He has invaded, annexed and exercised control over parts of several former Soviet states and now he wants all of Ukraine.

He is willing to treat human beings like livestock. He is willing to murder and torture them. He is willing to break families apart and relocate them if it means he can swallow up more territory into the hegemony of Russia. This is genocide.

The Bible prophesied of a Russian leader capable of carrying out such evil deeds. Ezekiel 38:2 identifies and names him the “prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal” (New King James Version). These names refer to Russia and two of its key cities. This prophecy in Ezekiel, along with passages in Daniel and Revelation, shows that this “prince of Rosh” will combine the forces of several other Asian nations and lead 200 million soldiers against enemy powers (Revelation 9:16).

This grand military would require an ambitious and formidable leader, and Putin is proving by his fruits to be that kind of man. “This world has a lot of authoritarian rulers,” Mr. Flurry writes. “But Vladimir Putin is one we need to keep a particularly close eye on. His track record, his nationality and his ideology show that he is fulfilling a linchpin Bible prophecy. The time frame of his rule also shows that nobody else could be fulfilling the Ezekiel 38 and 39 prophecy. … He is the ‘prince of Rosh’ whom God inspired Ezekiel to write about 2,500 years ago!”

To understand more about the prophecies related to genocidal Vladimir Putin, order your free copy of Mr. Flurry’s booklet The Prophesied ‘Prince of Russia.’