IZIUM, Ukraine (AP) — Hundreds of children from eastern Ukraine are stranded in Russian summer camps, on the wrong side of a front line that shifted after they were bused away for what their parents hoped would be a holiday from the war.
Parents in the occupied towns of eastern Ukraine who sent their children to the camps are now desperately trying to get them back.
Fifty-two children from Izium and around 250 more from other towns in the Kharkiv region, all between the ages of 9 and 16, are now scattered in camps, according to a Ukrainian intelligence official and a mother who hitchhiked into Russia to retrieve her daughter.
A Ukrainian counteroffensive forced Russian troops into retreat in the Kharkiv region in early September. Now the children are stranded almost 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from home.