Hundreds of kids from east Ukraine stranded in Russian camps
IZIUM, Ukraine (AP) — The Russian occupation radio and newspaper ads promoted the camps as a summer break from the war for Ukrainian children under their control, free of charge. Hundreds of families agreed in the occupied east and the south, Ukrainian officials and parents say.
One bus convoy left Izium at the end of August, with the promise that the children would return home in time for the school year. Instead, Ukrainian forces swept though in early September, driving the Russians into a disorganized retreat and liberating territory that had been in enemy hands for months.
Fifty-two children from Izium and around 250 more from other towns in the Kharkiv region, all between the ages of 9 and 16, are now scattered in camps, according to a Ukrainian intelligence official and a mother who hitchhiked into Russia to retrieve her daughter. Both, like nearly everyone involved in the issue, spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive and fraught situation.
“Our main goal was to give the children a break from everything that was happening here, from all the horrors that were here,” said Valeriya Kolesnyk, an Izium teacher whose 9-year-old is now in Russia. “The problem is that the Russian side does not plan to return the children to us.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hundreds-of-kids-from-east-ukraine-stranded-in-russian-camps/ar-AA12oqj2
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