Kira, 10 years old
Fearing that their children would not have enough to eat during the occupation of Kherson, Kira's parents agreed to send their daughter to a so-called "summer camp" in Crimea. They were promised five meals a day and sports activities: Kira would be able to "recover from the war" there.
Instead, as punishment for "misbehavior," Kira was placed in a psychiatric hospital for a month without her parents' consent. To this day, her parents don't know what medication she was given. Kira only remembers that the medication made her sleep almost constantly.
What should have been two weeks of leisure and relaxation turned into six months in so-called "re-education camps." During this time, Kira lived in constant fear of never returning home and never seeing her family again.
Kira's drawing depicts a dark cellar full of spiders and children forced to kneel on buckwheat as punishment for not following "patriotic routines." These are the memories she takes with her from the Russian children's camp.
