Months instead of weeks – courageous mother fetches daughter (15) from the Russian camp

«My Dasha was supposed to stay for three weeks in the Russian summer camp in Gelendzhik on the Black Sea. From August 28 to September 19,” says Taisia ​​Dozmugaeba (32). But the daughter never came back. At some point, Taisia ​​learned that the 15-year-old had been taken to another camp.

Her fear was over in mid-December: she was able to hug her daughter again. But only because she personally picked up her child in Russia together with other mothers.

To do this, the single mother from the village of Nechvolodivka, who had never left Kharkiv Oblast, had to undertake a long journey: via Poland to Belarus and finally to Russia.

It was not a matter of course that they would return to Ukraine. “Upon arrival, we were asked at the Russian border crossing if we knew that this would be a one-way trip.”

In August, seven children between the ages of 13 and 15 traveled to Russia from Nechvolodivka – together with between 300 and 400 children and young people from the entire Kupjansk region. Not all of them have returned to this day.

Free summer camps for children and young people lasting several weeks have a long tradition in Ukraine and Russia. Nevertheless, it is difficult to understand the decision: who sends their child to the country of the aggressor and enemy for vacation? The mother sighs.

“Dasha really wanted it. She had never seen the sea and all her friends from the village were allowed to go. She whined until I gave in.” Also: your village was occupied by Russian troops right at the beginning of the attack, the front was always close, the war with its explosions and skirmishes was omnipresent. “The children should have the chance to recover,” says Taisia.

Above all, children from the region returned safe and tanned from the Russian tourism and recreation center on the Russian Black Sea coast. But when Ukrainian troops retook Kupyansk on September 10, problems surrounding the children’s return began to emerge.

Dasha, who regularly reported to her mother how nice everything was, that she was being treated well and that she was having fun, now explained to her mother that the Russian camp officials did not want to send her back because war was raging and they were worried about her safety. “But we’ve had wars before. But now our region and our village were Ukrainian again – that was probably the reason,” says Taisia.

The day of the planned homecoming passed, more days and weeks followed, it was October. «Then Dasha told me that they had been taken to another camp in Anapa because the weather was getting colder and there were heated rooms. The children only had summer clothes with them.”

It was the moment when she and the other mothers from Nechvolodivka realized that they had to do something. Because: “Where would you take the children next?”

They were particularly worried about the offers made to the children by those responsible for the camp and even the mayor of Anapa: “They let it be known that we could pick up the children with the necessary papers at any time. That Russian citizenship was waiting for us and that we could all live in Russia where there would be peace. None of us even considered it. Because home is home. We just wanted our kids back.”

The women from Nechvolodivka applied for passports and realized that the cost of the planned trip was far beyond their means. Only with the help of the non-governmental organization “Save Ukraine” was it possible for two buses to set course for Poland, Belarus and finally Russia at the beginning of December. All in all they were on the road for ten days.

“Yes, it was risky,” the small farmer recalls. “The people from ‘Save Ukraine’ advised us: ‘Don’t say you’re picking up the children, you just want to visit them. If you are offered citizenship, act as if you really think about it.'” Looking back, the farmer from Nechvolodivka says: “Not everyone in Russia is bad. A Russian border guard advised us to choose a different crossing point for exit than for entry. He understood our situation.”

Russia is accused of forcibly relocating thousands of Ukrainian children and youth (see box). The summer camps are also likely to be part of a broader political initiative by the Kremlin to indoctrinate eastern Ukrainians in particular and thus create further prerequisites for Russian annexation.