By Emma BubolaThousands of Ukrainian children have been transferred to Russia. “I didn’t want to go,” one girl told The New York Times from a foster home near Moscow.
A broken window at a hospital in March in Mariupol, Ukraine. Russian officials have made clear that their goal is to replace any childhood attachment to home with a love for Russia. 출처: AP/ Evgeniy Maloletka
As Russian forces laid siege to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol this spring, children fled bombed-out group homes and boarding schools. Separated from their families, they followed neighbors or strangers heading west, seeking the relative safety of central Ukraine.
Instead, at checkpoints around the city, pro-Russia forces intercepted them, according to interviews with the children, witnesses and family members. The authorities put them on buses headed deeper into Russian-held territory.
“I didn’t want to go,” said Anya, 14, who escaped a home for tuberculosis patients in Mariupol and is now with a foster family near Moscow. “But nobody asked me.”
In the rush to flee, she said, she left behind a sketchbook containing her mother’s phone number. All she could remember were the first three digits.
