Rescued Ukrainian children settle back into life at home after abduction by Russian forces
Jane Ferguson:
They are just some of what Ukraine says are as many as 19,000 families have been separated when the Russian military and Ukrainian collaborators working at the children's schools moved their children to Russian-occupied areas, saying it was for their safekeeping, and never returning them.
Another boy, Sasha, is rushed into a quiet car. He has autism and is nonverbal. After six months away from his family, he is struggling with physical touch and night terrors, his mother tells us. Almost all men are not permitted to leave the country because of the war effort. It fell on these women, many who had rarely left their hometowns before, to go on a dangerous journey to get them back.
That journey was long, fraught, and secret. But as their best pulled into Kyiv, they were met by a throng of international press. While they were traveling into Russian-controlled territory, the International Criminal Court announced that Russia's deportation of their children was a war crime, and issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin and children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.
She herself took custody of a Ukrainian teenager from Mariupol last year. Journalists Amanda Bailly and Anton Shtuka chronicled the women's journey, and returned to visit them and the children after the initial media frenzy died down.
Svetlana, now back in Kherson after retrieving her granddaughter, remembers a harrowing journey, where she had to be careful what she told Russian border officials about her visits true meaning.
Source: PBS NewsHour
