Oksana Stetsenko runs to her son Nikita, tears streaming down her face as she hugs him tightly.
In the TV spot on pro-Kremlin NTV, a reporter explains that the Ukrainian mother had “lost contact” with the boy in the fall, when the Russian military took 13 kids from a boarding school in the Ukrainian town of Kupyansk, east of Kharkiv.
According to the May 20 TV report, the children had been taken to “a safe place,” in line with Moscow’s official narrative depicting Russia as the savior. But Stetsenko told a different story about a week later, when she returned safely to Ukraine with Nikita.
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