In the autumn of 2022, the "road of life", which connected the temporarily occupied and free parts of Zaporizhzhia region, turned into a road of survival. The epicenter of the events that we will tell about in this article is one of the checkpoints at the entrance to the town of Vasylivka. From July 2022 to January 2023, it became the stage for showcase deportations of residents of the occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. There, the propagandists filmed dozens of videos in which people, often dressed not for the weather, sometimes with their hands tied and with a bag on the heads, were read out orders of expulsion, i.e. deportation from their native towns and villages. After that, they were ordered to walk or run to the grey zone, in the direction of Zaporizhzhia. As it turned out, not everyone managed to overcome the road.
As the Suspilne investigative editorial office found out, some of the deportations were staged and after the filming of propaganda videos, people were taken to labor slavery, where the Russians forced them to dig trenches near the frontline. Moreover, in some cases, deported Ukrainians went missing.
The "main character" of the deportations in the videos was a man in a balaclava with the call sign "Batman". He was also engaged in intimidation, interrogations, and transportation into labor slavery. The Suspilne investigators identified this war criminal, as well as his associates involved in mass deportations.
In more detail, we told about Batman in the investigative documentary "Call Sign "Batman": the Secret of the Vasylivka checkpoint".
Illegal order of the so-called "governor" Balytskyi
On July 14, 2022, the former member of the Ukrainian parliament, and now the self-proclaimed governor of the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia region, Yevhen Balytskyi, legalized forced deportations in the occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia region with the order "On measures of responsibility for the commission of certain offenses that encroach on public order and public safety". A similar order was signed by the former member of parliament and the self-proclaimed governor of Kherson region, Volodymyr Saldo.
These orders specified a list of "extremist" actions for which a person could be expelled. The list included any criticism or disagreement with the actions of Russia and its army, support for Ukraine, and even the use of the Ukrainian flag.
In practice, the list was much broader: a person could be deported because of a comment on the social media, a complaint against the occupiers in a private conversation, volunteering, attending the Ukrainian church, etc.
Ukrainian law enforcement agencies consider deportations to be a mechanism to fight pro-Ukrainian people.
Collaborator and ex-MP Yevhen Balytskyi positioned himself as an ideologue of deportations, repeatedly commenting on the nuances of this process to propagandists. In his opinion, this is "the most humane punishment".
"We have deported a large number of families. It was very difficult to do it. We deported those who in one way or another did not support the special military operation (this way, the Russians call the war against Ukraine — ed.), those who insulted the flag, the anthem of Russia, the president of the Russian Federation. At that time, in the situation until we legally joined the Russian Federation, we were deporting such people," Balytskyi told one of the propaganda media resources.
Hundreds of Russian media resources covered the practice of deportations in the temporarily occupied territories. Federal channels and local groups on the social media posted videos in which Ukrainians were expelled from their native land.
In Ukraine, these videos became the evidence of war crimes. Currently, the court in Zaporizhzhia is considering a criminal case in which Yevhen Balytskyi is accused of violating the laws and customs of war based on a prior conspiracy by a group of persons.
According to Artem Batrak, deputy head of the war crimes department of the Zaporizhzhia region prosecutor’s office, the occupation authorities made decisions on deportations without court trials, which is contrary to the international humanitarian law.
"Balytskyi actually created pseudo-legal conditions for relocation of people, being aware of their protected status according to the Geneva Conventions, being aware that this was happening in the armed conflict conditions, that it was aimed precisely at supporting and implementing the policy of the aggressor country," says Batrak.
Another war crime related to this order was the transfer of Ukrainians to forced labor slavery to the Russian military. In one of the interviews, Balytskyi did not even hide that people who were sentenced to deportation were forced to work for the Russian army.
"Before deportation, all this category of people first goes and digs trenches. They work for the good of the motherland for two weeks, and then they go to Ukraine," Balytskyi told the propagandists.
This forced labor for the Ukrainians had no "legal" basis even in the reality that Balytskyi, his associates and the Russian occupiers temporarily created in the occupied lands of Zaporizhzhia region. Punishment in the form of digging trenches was not provided even by the arbitrary order of Balytskyi, not to mention more weighty normative acts. According to prosecutor Artem Batrak, the involvement of citizens from the temporarily occupied territories in the construction of fortifications for the benefit of the enemy army is a war crime.
The practice of involving Ukrainians in work for the benefit of the Russian army began in the autumn of 2022, says Ivan Fedorov, the head of the Zaporizhzhia region administration. "I know a large number of people who were detained and forced to dig trenches near Tokmak and Berdyansk where the enemy held them. Then they left the occupation; they were brought out or paid for leaving the occupied territories," he states.
Fedorov assumes that there could be several hundred such cases only within the temporarily occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia region. However, the real numbers will probably be established only after the liberation of these territories.
"It was a mess. There was no jurisdiction in the temporarily occupied territories. There was no Ukrainian jurisdiction because of the enemy occupation. There was no Russian jurisdiction because at that time they did not recognize our territories as their legal subjects. They did not know what other territories they would be able to capture. There were no trials, there was no investigation, and it was a mess. Moreover, our residents were used for their [Russian] needs as slaves," says Fedorov.
The Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have identified 50 victims in the deportation case against Balytskyi. The journalists of the Suspilne investigative office managed to find 71 cases of deportations in Zaporizhzhia region, recorded in photos and videos. In 31 of them, people were deported by a man with the call sign "Batman", in the other cases — by other collaborators.
In fact, the number of people who were forcibly expelled from the temporarily occupied territory of Zaporizhzhia may be much bigger because, as we found out, the occupiers did not film all the deportations.
In addition to Yevhen Balytskyi, dozens of other representatives of the occupation authorities were involved in forced deportations and labor exploitation of Ukrainians. In particular, those who, hiding their faces, read out the deportation orders.
Batman, given the number of public deportations carried out by him, was one of the main persons among them.
Staged deportations
The first video of the deportation appeared on the Internet on August 5, 2022. It differs from the other videos with its so to say large-scale approach to deportation. The video shows footage from a quadcopter: the detention, during which armed men break into a village house, tie the man’s arms and, in the end, accompanied by a convoy of cars with flashers, take him to the Vasylivka checkpoint.
The video ends with reading of the expulsion order. The flag of the Soviet Union flies in the background.
With the approach of the so-called referendum in the occupied territories, the flag at the checkpoint was replaced by the Russian flag. Then Batman entered the game. The first video, in which he appears, was made by the Melitopol occupation police and was posted on August 30, 2022.
The further deportations, conducted by him in the autumn of 2022, followed the same scenario. In them, he always wears a balaclava, sometimes with a changed voice. He always reads the same order in which a person is accused of "discrediting the authorities". The most famous such episode was the deportation of the director of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant Ihor Murashov.
In January 2023, Batman’s comments for the first time got into the news of three Russian media resources. Propagandists presented him as an employee of the law enforcement agency and indicated his call sign. From his comment, it can be assumed that he had already carried out many deportations. He said that he expelled mostly people born in the 1960s-1970s, "who firmly believe in Ukraine".
That time, in the video filmed by the Russian mass media, he was deporting three people: two men and a woman, whom he called "a group who pinpointed [Ukrainian] strikes". "We see them off normally. We even give them documents. We even gave the woman money to get to Zaporizhzhia," Batman said in the propaganda video.
In the end, the video shows two men and a woman walking in the direction of Zaporizhzhia, holding hands. However, they did not reach the Ukraine-controlled territory. The deportation turned out to be staged.
When the propagandists had filmed enough material, Batman put people in the car trunk and took them to the headquarters of the Russian military near the village of Verkhnia Krynytsia.
Olena Yahupova is one of these people, and her story became the first public testimony of what the occupiers did to supposedly "deported" Ukrainians.
The story of a woman whom Batman brought into the forced labor slavery
Olena Yahupova is a resident of Kamianka-Dniprovska, a small town in Zaporizhzhia region that was occupied by the Russians at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. In February 2022, she decided to stay at home. She says she could not leave because she did not know how to take with her the family dog, Hella. Her three daughters were far away, safe. Her husband Artur had already been fighting against the Russians for three years.
The woman worked in government institutions for almost thirty years, so the collaborators tried to persuade her to work in their structures. Olena refused. She lived in fear, hoping that the Russians would not find out about her military husband; she hoped that her hometown would soon be liberated.
In October 2022, armed men led by an FSB employee, 29-year-old Yan Zanevskyi, the son of the head of the security service of fugitive ex-president Viktor Yanukovych, came to Olena’s house.
According to Olena, she was placed in the cell of the Kamianka-Dniprovska police station, where Zanevskyi, his subordinates and local police collaborators forced her to confess participation in a sabotage group. The woman says they beat her on the head with a water bottle, strangled her, and put a plastic bag on her head, but they did not receive any information from her. Then she was transferred to a local detention center, where she spent three months without basic living conditions.
According to Olena, on the morning of January 18, 2023, she was taken out of the detention center; they put a bag on her head, put in a car and took to the bus station in Vasylivka, where the occupiers set up a "filtration" point. On the way, two other people were put into the car. They also had survived torture.
During the "filtration" procedure, a person called "Batman" appeared.
"As soon as he entered, they said to him, "Batman, they brought some more [people] for you today". He asked how many. They answered — three. He entered the room and said to me, "How many more of you, prostitutes, will be here?" Then he said, "Put them in the car trunk". You see the attitude was like towards the slaves. And we were not even criminals," Olena Yahupova recalls those events.
Digging trenches and demining fields: everyday life of prisoners
After the fake deportation had been filmed, Batman took her and two men to "Transit" cafe near the village of Verkhnia Krynytsia. There was the headquarters of the Russian military headed by a Russian officer with the call sign "Krater".
According to Olena, Batman handed her and two men over to a Russian who called himself the platoon commander. His name was Andrey, call sign "Sarmat".
"Sarmat gave us three shovels and said, “Now it is time to work for the good of the Russian Federation". It was snowing, there was mud in the trenches, and it was impossible to bear all that. "Dig!" I was wearing boots and they were dirty with mud, and one of the men was wearing rubber slippers. He had been detained in the summer. No one cared. "Take a shovel." Many trenches were dug there. I noticed that people were not in one place, but in many different places around. Of course, there were guards near them," Olena says.
During January 2023, Batman brought several more people to the forced labor camp where Olena was staying. There were 18 of them in total. People lived in different houses captured by the Russians in Verkhnia Krynytsia and its surroundings. They called the prisoners an "engineering platoon" and dressed them in Russian military uniforms. People could not move freely or refuse to perform work due to the threats of shooting, Olena Yahupova told us.
They were forced to work every day from six in the morning until late in the evening. People were taken to work in a trailer, and armed Russian soldiers stood behind them, the woman added.
At first, both men and women were forced to dig trenches. Then women were made to clean the houses and dugouts of the Russian military, to cook, iron, and do other household work. Men at that time dug trenches, cut down trees, built dugouts, and even demined fields.
According to Olena Yahupova, people were forced to work for the occupiers for two months. In March 2023, they were freed due to the efforts of their relatives.
From our own sources, we found out that these 18 people were involved in forced labor by the 4th company of the 4th Guards military base in South Ossetia, occupied by the Russians. In March 2022, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported the presence of three battalion-tactical groups of this unit in Ukraine.
In Olena’s opinion, this "labor camp" was initiated not by the Russians, but by Batman. In addition, she is convinced that it was he who set up the scheme of transferring Ukrainians into labor slavery.
"Batman" is the media pseudonym of a separatist
From the deportation videos, we learned that Batman could have worked in one of the occupation structures such as the "Military-Civil Administration of Zaporizhzhia region", Police Department No. 4 in the town of Dniprorudnyi, or the so-called "State Security Service" — a prototype of the FSB, which operated in the occupied territories before Russia included them in the constitution.
We researched dozens of occupation media resources of Vasylivka and Dniprorudnyi, looking for a man similar to Batman. We asked the witnesses, whom he had deported, to identify every man who looked like Batman. However, the search did not bring results. Probably, Batman never appeared in propaganda videos without a balaclava, did not get into photos published by the propaganda media, local collaborators and the Russian military.
The journalists of the Suspilne investigative editorial office interviewed dozens of deportees. Among them, there were people deported by Batman and those who were deported by other collaborators. We also interviewed Vasylivka residents who managed to evacuate.
We sent sent the video with Batman to all these people and asked whether they had seen the man before. According to the testimonies of two people who were deported by other collaborators, Batman was also present during their deportations.
"I think it was he who used swear words and threatened to shoot me in Vasylivka, but he was not the driver. However, he was there when they brought me to the gas station," said Oleksandr Bohomaz, a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
Two more people also remember this gas station in Vasylivka. According to them, the occupiers set up something like a migration service there. We also received evidence that Batman was checking people and cars at one of the checkpoints near the city. According to the witnesses, he made decisions who could leave the occupied territory and who could not.
All these witnesses gave a description of Batman. They remember him as an aggressive man, 30-40 years old, with fair hair or even bald. Most of them also noted that he could understand the Ukrainian language well and spoke Russian like a Ukrainian.
One of the men who had contact with Batman suggested in a private conversation that a separatist from Donetsk region was hiding behind the balaclava. According to the man, whose name we are withholding for security reasons, Batman was much more concerned about his security than the Russian security officers were.
Batman was also mentioned in the "Vasylivka municipal district" Telegram group. Its administrators repeatedly called on locals to report about pro-Ukrainian citizens so that "Batman could have a conversation with them". Sometimes people asked in the comments who he was, but they did not receive direct answers.
One of the administrators of this group, collaborator from Vasylivka Serhii Sokolovskyi, whom the Security Service of Ukraine considers to be a coordinator of the FSB’s agent network and suspects of pinpointing Russian strikes, bragged about his connection with Batman. In one of the posts, he said that the Ukrainians had allegedly attempted to assassinate him, and then he posted a video in which a blindfolded and tied-up boy appeals to Ukrainians not to touch Sokolovskyi. In the caption to the video, Sokolovskyi noted that Batman was involved in it.
At the same time, there existed "The end" Telegram channel, which united supporters of the occupation of Ukraine. In 2022-2023, several dozen posts mentioned Batman.
Several deportation videos posted on the channel show that the deportation was turned into a show, with smoke bombs, cartoon and comic inserts, and music that according to the channel’s administrator had been picked by Batman himself.
In addition to forced deportations from the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia, according to the administrator of this Telegram channel, Batman carried out cleanups, conducted interrogations, checked the phones of Ukrainians, organized sabotage, pinpointed strikes, and tortured Ukrainians.
One of the videos shows the deportation of Olena Yahupova behind the scenes. The video was shot by Batman himself. In it, he presents his team, but does not show the faces. Those present "celebrate" the end of filming. Batman is holding a glass and says, "Congrats on deportation".
The administrator of "The end" Telegram channel is Pavel Shulzhenok, a Russian propagandist from Sochi, a former priest who fought against Ukraine in Donetsk region in 2019. He personally published all posts about Batman and claimed that he was his former comrade-in-arms.
Shulzhenok often posted his alleged correspondence with Batman, in which he was portrayed as an experienced soldier with radical beliefs. On one of the screenshots, we noticed the nickname of a user who wrote on behalf of Batman, and found out that this nickname was registered as the e-mail of an employee of the occupation police and one of collaborators in Vasylivka.
At the same time, the phone number under which the "Batman" account is registered is signed as "Roman Chubarev". He is a former Ukrainian police officer who defected to the enemy back in 2014, held various positions in the occupation law enforcement structures in Crimea and Donetsk. In 2023, the Ukrainian law enforcement accused Chubarev of collaboration, claiming that he was the head of the economic security department in the occupation law enforcement agency — the so-called "State Security Service of Zaporizhzhia region", "GSB" in Russian.
According to the investigation, Chubarev started working for the "GSB" in July 2022, and one of his duties was "to carry out the so-called expulsion of local residents from the temporarily occupied territory of Zaporizhzhia region".
We found several voice messages sent from the "Roman Chubarev" account to the chat of "The end" Telegram channel. The voice in them is not like the voice of Batman. We also found a photo of Chubarev on the social media and realized that he cannot be "Batman" from the deportation videos.
After analyzing dozens of messages from the account, which the Telegram channel showed as the "Batman" account, we assumed that it could be used by several people from the so-called "law enforcement system" of the temporarily occupied part of Zaporizhzhia region.
We wrote to Roman Chubarev in Telegram asking him to comment on his involvement in forced deportations of Ukrainians. He read the message, but did not reply and blocked us.
Posts about Batman on the mentioned channel stopped to appear in April 2023. Subsequently, in May, Balytskyi’s expulsion order was canceled. "By the decision of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, a decision was made to terminate this rule regarding deportation," said Balytskyi on the air of the Crimea-24 TV channel.
Batman’s second call sign became the key
Talking to another witness who survived the deportation, we found out that Batman also used another call sign — "Vnuk". An unidentified man with such a call sign appears in the case against a former Ukrainian policeman, and now a collaborator from Dniprorudnyi, Kostiantyn Lysenko.
As the Ukrainian law enforcement found out, when he was the chief of the occupation police of Dniprorudnyi in 2022, Lysenko carried out at least two deportations together with "an unidentified person who uses the call sign "Vnuk" for the purpose of conspiracy".
We tried to communicate with Lysenko by contacting him on the Russian social network "Vkontakte" with a request to comment on his involvement in deportations. However, he did not answer. We could not find any other actual contacts of Lysenko.
As the Suspilne investigative journalists found out, "Vnuk" and "Batman" are the same person.
We assumed that the call sign "Vnuk" could be used by a man with the last name Vnukov. After examining several dozens of dossiers of various Vnukovs on the "Peacemaker" website, we selected a person most similar to "Batman".
He is Roman Vnukov, a native of Makiivka, Donetsk region. He is 35 years old, and he has been fighting against Ukraine since at least 2015.
Before becoming a separatist, Roman Vnukov worked in the Third Rescue Squad in Makiivka. He has wife Yulia, daughter Ksenia, parents Vira and Oleksii. All of them still live in occupied Makiivka.
In 2016, Roman Vnukov appeared in the list of officers of the 5th separate motorized brigade of the 1st army corps of the terrorist organization "Donetsk People’s Republic". According to the Ukrainian intelligence data released in 2016, he was the deputy commander for personnel work in the 2nd motorized battalion.
When the Ukrainian intelligence made public the list of officers of his unit, Vnukov stopped posting personal information on the social media. He posted mostly propaganda slogans. Probably the only public event in which he was photographed took place in 2018.
Vnukov took part in the celebration of the day of the fictional republic as a member of the terrorist organization "People’s Shield of Donbas", which promotes Russian narratives and has a force wing fighting against Ukraine.
We managed to find current photos of Vnukov only on a few dating sites. In some of these photos, he was bald, in others he had short fair hair, as our witnesses claimed.
We sent the photo of Roman Vnukov to the witnesses. Ten people who saw the face of the person, who carried out their deportations or was present during them, recognized him as "Batman".
"It is exactly him. I feel like I am again standing near the Vasylivka checkpoint and he is reading Balytskyi’s decree," one of the deported women commented on Vnukov’s photos.
"Yes, it is him. He was driving," says another man who was deported by Batman.
Another piece of evidence in the investigation was a cobra tattoo on Vnukov’s left arm. A fragment of this tattoo can be seen in the photo with the members of the "People’s Shield of Donbas". We noticed a similar fragment in the video of one of the deportations, which Batman conducted in September.
Testimonies of people, posts in Telegram channels that described Batman as a separatist from Donetsk region, ten identifications, and the fragment of a tattoo — all this gives reason to believe that Roman Vnukov is "Batman".
We gave Roman Vnukov the right of reply by sending him a message on his active page in the Russian social media and a letter to his e-mail address. We did not receive any answers during the month.
The Vasylivka checkpoint and Batman disappeared from media mentions in January 2023.
However, forced deportations of Ukrainians from the temporarily occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia region continue. Despite the suspension of Yevhen Balytskyi’s decree, civilians continue to be detained in prisons and police stations, and then deported. The Russian occupiers continue to post photos and videos about it.
The Suspilne investigative editorial office will send all the evidence collected during the investigation to the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies. We hope for the punishment of war criminals.
This article was funded by the European Union. Its content is the sole responsibility of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
