Kira

Afraid 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: Kira would be able to “recover from the war” there.

Instead, as punishment for “misbehaviour”, Kira was placed in a psychiatric clinic for a month without her parents' consent. To this day her parents do not know what medication she was given. Kira only remembers that it made her sleep almost all the time.

What should have been two weeks of leisure and rest became six months in so-called “reeducation camps”. During that time Kira lived in constant fear of never coming home and never seeing her family again.

Kira's drawing shows a dark basement full of spiders and children who have 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.