For weeks after Russian troops forcibly removed Natalya Zhornyk’s teenage son from his school last year, she had no idea where he was or what had happened to him.
Then came a phone call.
“Mum, come and get me,” said her son, Artem, 15. He had remembered his mother’s phone number and borrowed the school director’s mobile phone. Natalya made him a promise: “When the fighting calms down, I will come.”
Artem and a dozen schoolmates had been loaded up by Russian troops and transferred to a school further inside Russian-occupied Ukraine.
While Natalya was relieved to know where he was being held, reaching him would not be easy. They were now on different sides of the front line of a full-blown war, and border crossings from Ukraine into Russian-occupied territory were closed.
But months later, when a neighbour brought back one of her son’s schoolmates, she learnt about a charity that was helping mothers bring their children
