The courageous mothers of Ukraine who travel to Russia to recover their children

In the midst of a mutual sea of ​​tears, Oxana and her daughter Eva melt into an emotional hug on the steps of a bus in kyiv last Saturday afternoon.

Her mother caresses her face, touches her, looks at her as if wanting to make sure that the girl returns from Russia whole and healthy.

They had separated 113 days ago.

Oxana can be considered a lucky mother, as there are still thousands of families who, according to the kyiv government, are still waiting to recover some minors who have been taken by the Russian occupation forces.

The Ombudsman of Ukraine, Dmitro Lubinets, estimates that there are more than 12,000 Ukrainian children on the other side of the border.

Of them, 8,600 were forcibly deported, according to data he made public on December 14.

In a more detailed count that is updated every day by the official Children of War website, the number of deportees this Friday was 13,613 compared to only 125 who have managed to return.

A 16-year-old boy living in the outskirts of Mariupol managed to return to Ukraine on December 19 after being given up to a Russian family eight months earlier, Lubinets reported.

The boy asked for help online and managed to escape to the border.

There are "credible reports of forced transfers of unaccompanied children to Russian-occupied territory or to the Russian Federation itself," the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned last September.

In addition, he expressed concern about a possible legal shortcut "to grant Russian citizenship to children deprived of parental care, and that these children can be adopted by Russian families."

More than 200 Ukrainian minors left on a trip on August 28 to a summer camp that was to last three weeks on a Russian beach on the Black Sea.

Several of their mothers, consulted by EL PAÍS, admit that all they wanted is for the little ones to spend a few days on vacation away from the war.

They never thought that they would end up leaving them on the other side.

Nor, they say, did they ever have the feeling that they were collaborating with Moscow's attempt to subdue and control Ukraine and the Ukrainians.

They know that they were overconfident when the children left different towns in the Kharkov region at the hands of the authorities who had invaded that territory in northeastern Ukraine for six months.

But the war front suddenly changed a few days after the excursion began.

At the beginning of September, the local army launched a counter-offensive in Kharkov that drove the military out of the Kremlin and the administration that supported them.

The area had just been liberated, but the families did not see the buses in which their children left return.

They then began to knock on different doors to try to get them back until they found Save Ukraine (Save Ukraine), a humanitarian organization that denounces the deportation and illegal adoption of minors.

Ludmila, Tamara and Taisia ​​(from left to right), photographed in Nechvolodivka (Kharkov) on November 30 when they were preparing the trip to Russia to recover their daughtersLuis

"They pressured and manipulated the parents to send them and then Russia refused to return them," says Myroslava Kharchenko, legal officer of this organization.

This NGO, which is directed by the former ombudsman for minors in the country, Mikola Kuleba, is the one that has facilitated the trip of 14 mothers from Kharkov to Russia, for which it has been necessary to prepare passports.

After crossing Ukraine, Poland, Belarus and Russia in a 10-day round trip and some 6,000 kilometers by road, they have managed to recover 20 of those children now and another 8 in September.

The expedition has been carried out without any of the two governments participating in the process, Khachenko says.

The only information they had was that provided by the minors themselves, since not even those in charge of the camps give access to the lists of the children they have, he regrets.

This, adds the legal manager of the NGO, is an obstacle that complicates the work of repatriation and family reunification in the midst of the war.

And it is the mothers who have to lead the process because the martial law that has prevailed since the beginning of the invasion prevents men between the ages of 18 and 65 from leaving Ukraine, with some exceptions.

Oxana's case is even more complicated.

She hasn't been able to be a part of that trip, so she couldn't meet her daughter until they arrived back in kyiv last Saturday.

This 42-year-old woman is not only a military doctor, but she is on leave after being injured last September in Bakhmut, the main front of the war these days.

Therefore, it did not seem advisable for Oxana, who has served in the army for a year, to enter Russian territory in the middle of the war.

For this reason, a permit had to be obtained so that relatives who live in that country could pick up Eva, aged 11, and facilitate her return to Ukraine with the rest of the expedition.

Taisia ​​(left) with her daughter Daria and Boris, her boyfriend, upon arriving in kyiv from RussiaLuis de Vega

EL PAÍS visited the town of Nechvolodivka, in the Kupiansk district (Kharkov region), on November 30.

There he met three of the mothers who had sent their daughters to the camp without suspecting that they were endangering them.

Nor did they imagine the odyssey that it would entail to recover them.

They are Ludmila, 48, mother of Veronika, 13;

Taisia, 32, mother of Daria, 15, and Tamara, 53, mother of Katia, 12. The meeting takes place in the kitchen of Ludmila's house, intoxicated by the smell of various loaves fresh from the oven.

The three women are already warned that at any time they can be notified to start the trip to Russia.

They say that at 6:00 a.m. on August 28, six buses left the Kupiansk municipal building for the Russian border.

There were about 300 children, the mothers estimate, bound for the town of Gelenzik (Russia), on the shores of the Black Sea and about 900 km from Nechvolodivka.

He had just returned on the 25th, an earlier shift from another camp, which helped them decide there would be no trouble.

None of the three mothers claims to have felt pressured to send her daughters.

“They were happy.

No one had ever been to a place like this before.

It was a vacation”, admits Taisia.

Boris, the boyfriend of her daughter Daria, is also part of the group and that reassured him more, he says while showing an image of the two kissing in front of the Black Sea on his mobile.

Meanwhile, communications with their children were fluid through mobile phones.

They frequently had calls, videoconferences, and sent photos to each other.

All three stated that they were treated well and provided clothing and food.

They complained, however, about some of the teachers who traveled with them siding with the occupation authorities.

“They are brainwashed with propaganda,” said Ludmila.

These are people, she added, who do not believe they will be able to return because the raids by collaborators in the towns liberated from Russian invaders are intense.

Moreover, they are sure that both these teachers and their families are already installed in Russia.

Ludmila with her daughter Veronika upon arrival in kyiv from RussiaLuis de Vega

Life in the town, where barely half of the 430 residents that existed before the invasion remain, has been almost frozen by the conflict.

“There is no job, no salary, no school…”, complains Ludmila, who, like her husband, is an employee of an important factory that is now closed.

Like many others in the region, she receives humanitarian aid to get by.

Myroslava Kharchenko, from Save Ukraine, does not know how many children who left the camp are still on the Russian side.

The lack of collaboration of those responsible in that country and the fact that there are families who have come to pick them up on their own makes it impossible to have a figure.

They know that there are many, because only in the Crimean peninsula, which Russia has illegally occupied since 2014, there are several camps with minors from the Kherson region.

“Only in one of them there are 140 children”, she affirms.

These Crimean minors are the target of the third rescue mission, which they are already organizing and which she estimates cannot take place before 2023.

The legal manager of Save Ukraine is not carried away by the optimism of having already managed to bring 28 minors.

She knows that this is only a small part.

She is also sure that those who are still in the hands of the Russian authorities are in danger of not returning and of being victims of illegal adoptions if they do not manage to expedite the procedures to recover them soon.

"They tell them that their parents have abandoned them and that in Russia they love them very much and they are going to find new families for them."

Last Saturday, seized with joy, Ludmila and Taisia ​​embraced in the presence of the reporter those girls who had been shown in a photo in Nechvolodivka.

“We are very tired, but happy and happy to finally be able to return home”, thanks Taisia ​​when they still have a little more than 600 kilometers from kyiv to reach her town.

Next to her, shy, but not separating from each other, Daria and Boris.

His youthful love in wartime returns reinforced in Russia.

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