Ukraine war: Mother tricked into sending daughter to Russian ‘indoctrination’ camp reveals rescue and emotional reunion
Ukraine has been telling anyone who would listen for months that Russia had a formal state-sponsored plan to effectively steal Ukrainian children, take them to Russia and turn them against their own country.
The Ukrainian government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say the number of missing children in the last year alone is more than 16,000.
They say the Russian brainwashing programme dates back to the start of this conflict in 2014, and in that time more than 700,000 children have been illegally moved.
Some parents have grown so desperate, they are risking travelling thousands of miles from Ukraine through Poland, then Belarus and Russia to Crimea to get their children back.
In a hostel in Kyiv set up for refugees, I met Lyudmila Motychak and her 15-year-old daughter Anastasia.
Lyudmila had undertaken this harrowing journey, but she lit up when she showed me the emotional video of the pair reuniting outside a Russian children’s facility in Crimea, after months apart.
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Nastya and her mother Lyudmila spoke to Sky News about their ordeal
Sceptical from the start, Lyudmila described how she was effectively tricked into letting her daughter go on a school trip, organised by the Russian-supporting authorities in Kherson and Crimea.
She said: “We were told that it will be a camp, and that the children were going there for two weeks, and they told us not to worry, that they would bring our children back, that a lot of children were going.
“I was afraid to let her go from the beginning. I was saying it’s a war, she shouldn’t go, but they insisted everything would be okay.
“They told me not to worry, everything will be okay. They said there is no war there, everything is good there, they will feed them five times a day and it’s good for her health, and that there is everything there, even a swimming pool.”
Two weeks later when her daughter didn’t return, Lyudmila realised something more sinister was at play.
“They told me it would be very good for my child, but there was nothing like that there, to tell the truth.”
Forced to sing Russia’s national anthem
Lyudmila described how she rang up the teachers, and the director of the educational college that her daughter attended. They kept telling her she would be returned at some point, but that the trip had turned into an evacuation because of the war.
Her daughter Anastasia, who goes by Nastya, told us that when she left Kherson, she departed on a convoy of 100 buses, each carrying 30 to 40 children. That’s more than 3,000 children on just one trip.
The opportunity was described to her as something like a “summer camp”, even though it was October.
But, she says, it was nothing like that.
She described how they were forced to sing Russia’s national anthem and follow strict orders.
“They said to us: ‘We are feeding you, we give you water, and we give you heating and comfort, and you’re so ungrateful.’
“They were confiscating balloons we had in the colours of the Ukrainian flag, and they were also shouting at us, saying: ‘We are ungrateful’, and to ‘go back to your fascists’.”
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Ex-Putin adviser: ‘Russia does not steal children’
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When two weeks passed, Nastya asked if she could go home, but the authorities were buying time.
She said: “They started delaying and telling us on this date… you will go back home, don’t worry.
“But we didn’t go when those dates came.
“Then they started telling us other dates, but we never left.
“Then they told us it was an evacuation, and then finally they said we have to stay indefinitely – and that only our parents can come get us out.”
With the help of Save Ukraine, a Ukrainian NGO that helps families travel to Russia and the occupied territories to get their children back, Lyudmila and Nastya were able to reunite.
‘Indoctrination of our children’
Lyudmila believes it was always the plan to take the children for good and then try to convince the parents to follow – and stay.
She said: “They took the children and then they wanted parents to join their children, and then they were promising money, and they were promising homes and apartments, financial help.
“Of course they wanted to people to adopt their way of thinking. They wanted people to join them and play by their rules.”
The Ukrainian authorities and Save Ukraine say this is all part of a detailed strategy Russia had to take Ukraine’s children.
Save Ukraine spokesperson Olga Yerokhina said: “We consider it re-education and indoctrination of our children, and when I think about those children who haven’t got any parents for different reasons, how will we find them at all.”
“We must look at this from the perspective of history. It’s nothing new and this whole thing was prepared. What do they do with children… it’s part of a bigger policy against Ukraine.”
Olga Yerokhina
I asked her if she thought it was part of a well-orchestrated plan.
She replied: “Yeah, we understand that it was not only about the full-scale invasion in 2022, it was prepared long before this.”
The exact number of children who have left Ukraine, or been forcibly removed, and may never be seen or heard from again, is unknown.
But the International Criminal Court (ICC) charges may one day bring someone involved to justice. That’s what Olga Yerokhina wants – some kind of concerted international plan and justice.
She said: “We have a lot of work to do.
“We hope the international community and Poland and the United Nations, that together we can create some kind of mechanism to return these children.
“We are realistic. Maybe we can’t do it for all of them, but we have to do as much as we can.”
An Afghan man who worked for the British military has told Sky News he feels betrayed and has “completely lost (his) mind” after his identity was part of a massive data breach.
He told The World with Yalda Hakim about the moment he discovered he was among thousands of Afghans whose personal details were revealed, putting him at risk of reprisals from the Taliban.
The man, who spoke anonymously to Sky News from Afghanistan, says he worked with British forces for more than 10 years.
But now, he regrets working alongside those troops, who were first deployed to Afghanistan in 2001.
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Afghans being relocated after data breach
“I have done everything for the British forces … I regret that – why (did) I put my family in danger because of that? Is this is justice?
“We work for them, for [the] British, we help them. So now we are left behind, right now. And from today, I don’t know about my future.”
He described receiving an email warning him that his details had been revealed.
He said: “When I saw this one story… I completely lost my mind. I just thought… about my future… my family’s.
“I’ve got two kids. All my family are… in danger. Right now… I’m just completely lost.”
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The mistake by the Ministry of Defence in early 2022 ranks among the worst security breaches in modern British history because of the cost and risk posed to the lives of thousands of Afghans.
On Tuesday, a court order – preventing the media reporting details of a secret relocation programme – was lifted.
Read more from Sky News:
Minister defends handling of breach
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Afghan women throw babies to troops
Reuters file pic
Defence Secretary John Healey said about 6,900 Afghans and their family members have been relocated or were on their way to the UK under the previously secret scheme.
He said no one else from Afghanistan would be offered asylum, after a government review found little evidence of intent from the Taliban to seek retribution.
But the anonymous Afghan man who spoke to Sky News disputed this. He claimed the Taliban, who returned to power in 2021, were actively seeking people who worked with British forces.
“My family is finished,” he said. “I request… kindly request from the British government… the King… please evacuate us.
“Maybe tomorrow we will not be anymore. Please, please help us.”
World
Ross Edgley: The British ‘Thor’ swimming 1,000 miles around Iceland – and what happened when he met killer whales
Towering waves, freezing temperatures and even some inquisitive killer whales. Iceland is doing its best to defeat Ross Edgley.Â
Inspired by “Thor”, the British extreme athlete is in the middle of a challenge worthy of the Norse god – spending four months swimming 1,000 miles around the whole of Iceland in the name of science.
And while it comes with its challenges – a video of parts of his tongue falling off because of the salty sea water went viral – there have also been moments of beauty in the rugged Viking landscape.
“We’re on the northern coast right now,” Ross tells Sky News as he prepares to get back in the water.
“There’s nothing to stop the wind coming from the Arctic, and it’s just smashing into the north of Iceland. We’re miles out, just like a bobbing cork getting absolutely battered.”
Ross is making his way around Iceland clockwise after setting off from Reykjavik
Ross, from Cheshire, is no stranger to endurance events like this. In 2018, he swam nearly 1,800 miles around the coast of Great Britain and earned a Guinness World Record for swimming 317 miles along the Yukon River in Canada.
But the punishing cold as 39-year-old Ross swims 30km (18 miles) a day around Iceland is something else.
“The body just takes a consistent battering,” he says, characteristically cheery and enthusiastic despite everything.
“You just do your best to keep it in some sort of shape, controlling the inevitable breakdown of your body, hoping that you get back into Reykjavik.”
Some of the injuries Ross has picked up so far, and the salt water hinders healing
He’s eating between 10,000 and 15,000 calories a day – with pasta and his new favourite Icelandic liquorice as menu staples – just to keep going.
“You’re basically running through all of that food – I’m constantly saying it’s basically just an eating competition with a bit of swimming thrown in,” he chuckles. “But that’s genuinely what it is.”
His average day – storms permitting – sees Ross getting up and swimming for six hours, resting for six hours, and then getting back in the water to swim another six hours.
“You just do that on repeat. It’s really simple in theory, but brutal in reality.”
Ross is covering about 18 miles (30km) a day
To get ready for the cool Icelandic waters, Ross took inspiration from animals that have made it their home for thousands of years: whales and seals.
“I ended up putting on about 10-15 kilos of just pure fat. A bit of muscle as well but a lot of fat.
“When you look at what sort of animals survive in Iceland, there’s that idea of sea blubber. You want insulation, you want body fat.”
Perhaps unlike a seal however, Ross takes great care to defend the reputation of the killer whales that hunt in Icelandic seas.
“We’ve seen a lot, pods of them have come by and checked me out, wondering what the strange Englishman was doing in Icelandic waters, and then we went our separate ways.
“I want to combat some of the bad PR that orcas might have because there’s never been a verified case of an orca attacking a human in the wild. It just doesn’t exist.
“They’re amazing animals that deserve our respect and shouldn’t be feared.”
Ross back on board his support boat after swimming
There’s also a big scientific focus for Ross’s challenge as well.
“If we achieve this, it will achieve so much in terms of sports science – the first person to swim around Iceland. But that wasn’t a big enough reason to do it.”
Ross spoke to scientists who said that if he was “crazy enough” to want to do the swim, he would be able to collect daily samples of environmental DNA in the water, as well as levels of microplastics.
“By the end we’re just going to have this map of biodiversity around the whole coast of Iceland in a level of detail we’ve never really seen before. It’s going to be so comprehensive.
“So I think as the legacy of this swim, records and everything will be nice, but I actually think the science and the research that we contribute and give back will be unbelievable and actually make the chafing and losing parts of my tongue worth it.”
The swim is being paid for by a mix of sponsorships and self-funding.
Ross Edgley is swimming 1,000 miles around Iceland. Pic: James Appleton/BMW
Ross says he was inspired to take on the challenge in part by actor Chris Hemsworth and his role as the Norse god Thor, joking that the feat would be the closest thing to swimming around Asgard, the realm of the deities from ancient Scandinavia.
As he makes his way around the island, he gets to meet a local community where stories of Nordic gods are still an important part of life.
“It’s amazing, we’re just hearing these stories of Nordic folklore, sagas written about every single fjord we go around. It’s unbelievable.”
Ross and his team rest on land between swims
Fresh off one marathon swimming session, Ross and his team jumped into action to help the local community rescue 30 stranded whales.
“The team were absolutely exhausted… but having rescued the whales was the most rewarding moment as well.”
A moment of downtime on the boat. Pic: Ross Edgley/YouTube
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Ross set off on his swimming quest on 17 May, and it’s likely going to be a couple more months before he arrives back in Reykjavik.
He suggested that September is the goal, but added: “But you make plans and Iceland laughs at them.”
Picture credits: Ross Edgley/YouTube
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