Summer camp for children missing Ukraine

On the day of the full -scale invasion of Russia, Dad smoke told him that he would never see him again.

“The building on our street was blown up. Dad said,” I’m going to do everything I can, that you can live a normal life. ”

A few days later, the father of the smoke joined the military and drove to the front line.

Fifteen -year -old Dima shares his dad with 49 other Ukrainian children. Sitting by the fire, they keep candles to celebrate their missing.

The gentle slopes of the Ukrainian mountains of the Carpathians, strangled with glittering green fir trees and fir trees.

This is a strange background for this beautiful scene. We are in the relative security of Western Ukraine, Russian bombs rarely get here.

A little girl tells when a full -scale invasion began.

“The first time we were bombed, my hands were trembling and I was crying,” she says. “I took a long time to handle it.”

This activity at the fire is a kind of group therapy. This is part of the pioneer summer camp for a very special group of Ukrainian children, those with a father who disappeared during the war.

Some soldiers who were missing on the front line believe the dead. Some are in captivity or trapped in occupied areas.

The Ukrainian government states that more than 70,000 people are officially reported.

A charity managing the camp, Gen.ukrainian, helps thousands of injuried children across Ukraine and manages several summer camps.

But this is the first for this category of children, and the BBC has been exclusive.

“Many of these children have a lot of injuries, because not only the parents are absent, but some of their uncles and grandmothers are also gone,” explains Vanui Martirosyan, a leading psychologist of the charity.

“They live as frozen. They can’t plan something in the future because they don’t know what will bring the future. And we can’t work with them as children with real loss because they don’t have this item to start sadness.”

He says that many children spend hours, having got to Russian social media channels, desperately looking for information about their family members. Channels often contain rigid content associated with war.

“They feel fear of crying, they think that when they start crying, it will continue forever. This type of injury is perhaps the most difficult to work.”

The day after the meeting at the stake, I talk to a smoke that wants to tell me more about my dad. The last time he heard from him was the day before he disappeared in November 2023.

“He sent a video from them to drink all the tea in the woods and wrote me a message stating,” All right, I’ll call you tomorrow, “says the smoke.

The next day, Dima’s mom received a phone call stating that his father was missing.

“I started calling my mobile. Dad didn’t answer. That was everything. I was sitting there and I started crying. I realized I didn’t see my dad for a while.”

Throughout our interviews with children, including DIMA, a general psychologist was present.

“I continued to hope that by the end, my dad is somewhere prisoners. Even I still hope,” says the smoke.

The smoke trauma intensified only after his mother began to consider the circumstances of his father’s disappearance.

Initially, the military told her that her husband went missing after the air defense.

“Then someone else called the mother, the chief of something or the other, and said that the Russians had shot everyone, and someone saw the body of the dad that was lying there without feet. Then another soldier who was in his dad’s position, said he saw him dead, with a shrapnel wound.”

The smoke says that the impact on him and his mother was deep.

“Mom cried a lot from that. I supported her,” the smoke says. “When Dad left, he said, ‘Smoke, whatever it happens, you need to look after your mom because you are a man and you are her son.”

Group therapy at the camp is held daily, conducted in small rooms. We are allowed to observe the beginning of one of the sessions – the rest of the confidential.

One psychologist, Elena, shows the color schedule to children used to describe emotions. Green happy, blue is a sad, yellow anxious or overwhelm, and red is anger.

Today they will discuss sadness. The more unpleasant and sad we feel, Elena says, the more we love the people we are sad. This shows that these people are important to us.

Children are invited to express their feelings, including through art. On art -therapy, many paintings show happy families, houses and pets.

One of the seven -year -old boys, Zakhar, tells me his picture is called “Dad comes home.” It shows yellow sticks in front of the blue sky – the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

Many children live in cities that get into almost constant bombing by Russian drones and missiles. Like the 16-year-old hometown of Nastia Kharkiv, in the northeast of Ukraine, near the frontline.

“If there is a bombing nearby, I’m going into the hall.

Her father was also a soldier. It disappeared approximately a year ago on the front line. The last time she saw him in two weeks before he went missing.

I ask her what memories of your father she has, and her eyes were moving.

“He was very good, he ruined me a lot. He had a sweetness like me, and always knew what treats to buy me,” Nastia says. “I only remember the good things about my dad. The only thing I remember is that he has gone.

“I really love him and I know he loves me too,” she continues, adding, “I hope we can make new memories again.”

This camp also offers children the opportunity to catch up with a dream, continuous sirens – and just have fun and play. There are regular trips to the pool, hiking and volleyball games.

“It is important for the body to make movements to cure the injury,” explains the chief psychologist Vanui.

At the closing ceremony of the camp, it was time for children and staff to say goodbye.

One boy, Ilya, is in the flood tears – he doesn’t want to go home.

“We have such a child in every camp,” smiles Oksana Lebedev, founder of Gen.ukrainian.

It points to crowds of children playing in the garden.

“Perhaps for the first time in their lives they found people who have experienced the same experience. And it is very important. Group therapy is most important to see that you are not alone with pain.”

Oksana says that the scale of the task facing her charity is extraordinary.

“Millions of Ukrainian children are injured by war. This is a humanitarian disaster.”

Additional John Murphy Report