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Tens of thousands of Ukrainian children have lived under Russian occupation since Moscow's full-scale war on Ukraine began. Counselors at a summer camp help them work through their trauma. NPR's Hanna Palamarenko reports from western Ukraine.
HANNA PALAMARENKO, BYLINE: Nineteen-year-old camp counselor Daryna Kurlan is surrounded by children and teens, laughing and joking. She worked at the camp the summer before the war, where the focus was on fun. She never thought she'd be doing this job to provide psychological rehabilitation. Dasha, who is 17 and lived for months under Russian occupation in the northeastern Kharkiv region. NPR is not revealing the children's last names to protect their privacy.
DASHA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
PALAMARENKO: "My house was bombed, so I'm not going back there. I have no family left except for my brother, but he is fighting in the war," Dasha says. Sixteen-year-old Nika is from Oleshky, an occupied town in southern Ukraine. It was flooded last year when Russia blew up a giant dam on the Dnipro River.
NIKA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
PALAMARENKO: "I won't be able to return home either, even when the war ends," she says. The camp's founder, Oksana Lebedieva, says the 40 children in this camp face big challenges.
OKSANA LEBEDIEVA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
PALAMARENKO: "Some of them have been shot at. Some say they were tortured during interrogation. That trauma means they are often withdrawn, full of fear and distrust." She hires counselors who can relate to the children. Daryna fled her hometown at the beginning of the war.
DARYNA KURLAN: (Speaking Ukrainian).
PALAMARENKO: "I have a fear of never returning to Kharkiv again, of never returning home. I'm afraid that I will never be able to sit on my couch in my apartment again," she says. Campers seem to identify with that kind of fear.
DASHA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
PALAMARENKO: Dasha says she feels she can tell the counselor Daryna a lot of things she cannot tell anyone else.
KURLAN: (Speaking Ukrainian).
PALAMARENKO: "They start telling stories from the occupation where they did not know which adults they could trust. It's scary," she says.
KURLAN: Art therapy (speaking Ukrainian).
PALAMARENKO: Daryna announced it's time for art therapy, and the assignment is to draw your dreams. She comes up and looks over their shoulders one by one, offering words of praise.
KURLAN: (Speaking Ukrainian).
PALAMARENKO: "Often in this class, children draw family members who are dead. Another big theme is home."
KURLAN: (Speaking Ukrainian).
PALAMARENKO: "When I realize how the children who will never return home feel, it tears me to pieces," she says. In many of the paintings about their dreams, the campers have written just a single word - the name of their hometown, names of the places to which it is impossible or now painful to return, but where their hearts still remain.
Hanna Palamarenko, NPR News, western Ukraine.
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