“I didn’t recognize the children we took with us in April on the train to their new life,” Ksenia Mishonova, the children’s rights commissioner for the Moscow region, said in a statement. “Now they are our little citizens!”
Some children are actually orphaned or abandoned in Ukraine and enjoy their life in Russia. The Times spoke to a teenager from Mariupol who said he has no family back home. He said that his adoptive family loved him like he was their own.
Others, like Anya, take a long time to return.
She took a weekly class called Conversations About Important Things. The half-hour lesson, recently introduced by Putin, teaches children to be proud of Russia.
Sometimes, Anya said, she cried, wondering if something terrible had happened to her family.
After more than a month of reporting, Times reporters reached out to Anya’s mother, Oksana, in Ukraine. With no job, no internet, little disability benefits and a war going on, she says she doesn’t know how to find her daughter.
“I was looking everywhere, but I couldn’t find her,” she said. “She’s looking for me.”
She said that she did not know that Anya was taken to Russia.
Reporters told Anya and Oksana how to contact each other. However, the prospect of Anya returning home is unclear. Ukrainian officials have always been tight-lipped about the fact that they have brought back dozens of children from Russia.
“Is this really her number?” Anya asked.
Anastasia Kuznietsova, Alina Lobzina and Maria Varennikova contribution report.
