Ukrainian mothers going to the enemy territory to save their children 

When 15-year-old Sasha Kraynyuk studied the picture by Ukrainian investigators, he instantly recognised the boy in a Russian army uniform.

The teenager has the Z-mark of Russia’s battle emblazoned on his right hand, coloured in the Russian flag’s red, white and blue.

But the fellow’s name is Artem, and he is an Ukrainian.

Sasha and Artem were among 13 kids taken from their school in Kupyansk, north-eastern Ukraine, by armed Russian troopers in balaclavas the previous September. Taken onto a bus with screams of “Quickly!” they went for weeks without a trace.

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When the kids, who all have special educational requirements, were finally allowed to call home, it was from much deeper inside Russian-occupied parts.

Their relatives were moved to make gruelling trips across thousands of miles to get them back into the land that had declared battle on them. Only eight kids have been back from Perevalsk so far, and Artem was one of the last, collected by his mom just this spring.

When I got the school’s director by phone, she saw no issue with dressing Ukrainian kids in the uniform of an invading military.

“So what?” Tatyana Semyonova said. “What can I do? What’s it to do with me?”