More than 30 children were reunited with their families in Ukraine after a long operation to bring them back home from Russia where they had been taken from areas occupied by Russian forces during the war.

On Friday, mothers hugged sons and daughters as they crossed the border from Belarus into Ukraine after a complex rescue mission that involved travel across four countries. Kyiv estimates that nearly 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea since the country invaded Ukraine in February last year. Ukrainian officials condemned this as illegal deportation.

Some children reported that they’d been separated from their parents who were pressured by Russian authorities to send their children to Russian summer camps for what was billed as two weeks.  However, the children were forced to remain at the camps for four to six months, and they were moved from one place to another during their stay. Reportedly, they were closed in separate buildings and they were told that their parents no longer wanted them.

Difficult words: complex (consisting of many different but related parts), condemn (to criticize), bill (to list a person or event in a program).

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