Hundreds of kids from east Ukraine stranded in Russia camps
Hundreds of children from eastern Ukraine are stranded in Russian summer camps, on the wrong side of a front line that shifted after they were bused away for what was supposed to be holiday
Hundreds of children from eastern Ukraine are stranded in Russian summer camps, on the wrong side of a front line that shifted after they were bused away for what their parents hoped would be a holiday from the war.
Parents in the occupied towns of eastern Ukraine who sent their children to the camps are now desperately trying to get them back.
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.
A Ukrainian counteroffensive forced Russian troops into retreat in the Kharkiv region in early September. Now the children are stranded almost 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from home.