
Anastasiia Motychak did not know why Irina – the person in charge of her camp in Russian-occupied Crimea – had just slapped her across the face; she just knew she missed her mum and wanted to go home to the Ukrainian city of Kherson.
It had been two months since the then 15-year-old had been put on a bus and moved from the then Russian-occupied Kherson, in southern Ukraine, to a two-week “vacation camp” in Yevpatoria, western Crimea. Kherson was no place for a child, the Russian soldiers had warned.