Dead fish have yet to wash up on the sand of Anapa beaches. Now the Black Sea is an appropriate name: in three weeks it will be the first anniversary of the accident of two oil tankers that spilled thousands of tons of fuel oil. Earlier this summer, Javier G. Cuesta wrote a report on this economic and environmental disaster for a city that is a favorite summer destination for Russians. Although it has never been as attractive a place for them as some Mediterranean beaches in Türkiye or Egypt, the trip is not that expensive. The rows of sunbeds, green, yellow or orange umbrellas, in the background the large hotel complexes and from the sea, in a tree-lined park, a Ferris wheel. It’s a seventies look, like when the beach tourism industry went haywire here. Another complementary one has also been developed: summer camps for kids. Let your child spend a few days there, now that Kherson has been occupied by the Russians, a Kherson resident told Natalia in 2022. That’s where he went. That’s how the mother told it Caretaker. For months his son was kidnapped. Not anymore. There are thousands of Ukrainian children who are. His recovery, as Cristian Segura told us, obsesses his government.
I’m looking for information about those places in placid Anapa. There are some dedicated to sports with volleyball and basketball courts. Some have water slides that end in pools from which you can access the beach. One of the most curious offers are therapeutic camps, spa tourism for children with all kinds of health problems, and also, if the child is very small, there is a program where his mother can accompany him. You can also choose by theme: language learning, history-focused, military. There are also psychologists who help those with communication problems or those teenagers who need to adjust their behavior. This corrective pedagogy is what some of those thousands of young Ukrainians orphaned by war or separated received. Activist Nathaniel Raymond, who has been investigating this horrific episode at Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Laboratory for months, was forceful in his description of what is happening: the largest kidnapping since World War II, when the Nazis transported Polish children to Germany to learn German. Now deported, re-educated, militarized and some already Russian soldiers.
This year marks a century since the first summer camps in Anapa. Before there were only 40 children, tents, sun and swimming in the sea. Since the mid-sixties of the last century, the entire infrastructure of the camp for Russian youth has been built. Now there are very attractive facilities. The Smena complex depends on the Ministry of Education and the activities of the Yunarmiya association took place there: its goal is to instill patriotic values (their grandparents fought against the Nazis, they will fight against the Ukrainian Nazis) and provide military training to young people between 13 and 17 years old using firearms and flamethrowers. Obviously it is funded by the Ministry of Defense. It is made up of approximately 1,800,000 adolescents, including young Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied regions. If they don’t join the organisation, the BBC explained, they are penalized academically at school and parents are pressured to make their children join. It was proven that for three summers the abducted young Ukrainians received very specific training in that camp: how to assemble drones and other military equipment to use against their population.
