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Children separated from their families by war… and stranded in enemy territory. Having left in August for a holiday camp on the Black Sea, young Ukrainians did not return from Russia. To pick them up, their mothers will have to cross four countries. A team of “Special Envoy” was at the station in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, at the start of their train.
On this evening in January 2023, snow covers the platforms of the Kharkiv train station in eastern Ukraine. The departure of the train to kyiv is scheduled for 22:30. But Yulia will have to go much further to recover her daughter Yaroslava – to enemy territory. By train and then by bus, he will have to cross four countries: Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Russia.
Sixteen-year-old Yaroslava cried so much to go to summer camp by the Black Sea that her mother let her go. The colony was organized by the pro-Russian administration which occupied their village. When the town was taken over by Ukrainian forces, the children found themselves trapped in Russia. After three months without having seen her daughter, Yulia decided to go find her. She is not reassured, but “we have to go’she has “no choice“.
The round trip will last eight days
Yulia is not alone in starting this journey of more than 3,700 kilometers to help her child. They are thirteen Ukrainian women departing from this train, who want to join the same summer camp on the Black Sea. Mothers armed with their shopping bag alone, and with all their courage.
– But you are going into enemy territory!
– I am their enemy! And beware of them if they attack me or my daughter!Vita, mother of a teenager stranded in a summer camp in Russiain “Special Envoy”
For Aleksandra’s mother, 15, there is an urgent need to bring her daughter back. Vita does not want “risk her being adopted and given to a family in Russia, being brainwashed, being told ‘your mother abandoned you’!”
The travelers have not planned any stage during the eight days that the round trip must last. They will just drive along, not stopping anywhere in Russia to sleep. Like them, hundreds of Ukrainian mothers embarked on this journey… in the middle of the war.
Excerpt from a report broadcast in “Special Envoy” on February 16, 2023.
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