Abducted children and those from occupied territories are turning up in Russia’s military-style training camps, with fears that some are already on the frontline

Last summer, Sonya*, aged 17 at the time, had endured more than two years of a difficult life under Russian occupation in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine. Her foster mother agreed that she needed a break.

Growing up under forced assimilation had been scary, Sonya says, and her Russian-controlled school had offered to take her to a holiday camp in Crimea, a balmy peninsula once famed for being the spa of the Soviet Union.