HEARTBROKEN Ukrainian mums have shared their fears after their children were snatched by Vladimir Putin’s forces and transferred to hellhole camps across Russia.
Desperate parents described how their kids were sent on “school trips” but ended up in “re-education” camps where they were often starved and beaten.
Thousands of children have been abducted or taken to Russian-controlled areas with only a few of them reuniting with their families in Ukraine.
Distressed mothers told the Sunday Times how they were pressured to send their kids to summer camp and then lost contact with them for months.
Single mum Tatiana Vlaiko from Kherson said she was forced to send her 11-year-old daughter Lilya to a two-week summer camp in Moscow-annexed Crimea in September.
Even though communication was limited, she managed to get through a few times.
Young Lily spoke of fun activities but Tatiana was alarmed when her daughter mentioned everything was in Russian and the kids were forced to sing the Russian national anthem every day.
She was later told Lily had been moved to a different camp.
And despite her efforts to contact her daughter’s teacher, she could not find out where her daughter was.
In a similar situation was Lyudmila Motychak, 44 who lost contact with her daughter Anastasia, 15, after she was sent on a school trip to a “health camp in Crimea.”
In a Telegram message, Anastasia told her mum they had been told, to tell the parents to go to Crimea as they would have ” a flat and money.”
Another mum from Beryslav, Kherson, Inessa Vertash, was also pressured to send her son Vitaliy, 15, to a camp by his headmistress.
The mum shared how the teen described in tears the horrid living conditions at the camp over the phone.
She said: “He called me, crying, saying it’s not a camp for kids, it’s like a prison.
“There were no sheets on the beds, they were made to wear clothes of old people, given food only fit for pigs and beaten if they didn’t sing the Russian anthem.
“He told me camp workers were forcing 13-year-old Ukrainian girls to have sex with them.”
She added that the children were told their parents had left Ukraine and abandoned them.
Tatiana and Lyudmila was able to travel to Crimea alongside other parents and reunite with their daughters nearly four months later with the help of the Save Ukraine organisation.
They belonged to the lucky ones as only 307 children out of thousands have returned to their families-Inessa is still looking for her son.
According to The Ukrainian Government website Children of War, 353 children remain missing, 16221 have been deported, 10147 have been found – while only 307 have been reunited with loved ones.
It comes as a study by Yale University published last month revealed that at least 6,000 children from Ukraine have been taken to re-education camps across Russia including in Moscow-annexed Crimea and Siberia, for “pro-Russia patriotic and military-related education.”
The report notes that the number is “likely significantly higher.”
Russia has tried to cast the relocation effort as saving orphans or bringing children for medical care but parents say their children were abducted or they were pressured to give consent to send them away.