The surprise trip signals the Kremlin is trying to keep up business as usual, two days after an international court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president.
The story of one girl who ended up in a Russian foster family shows the damage done by this mass transfer, which is part of a vast propaganda campaign.
One town is protecting a statue of St. Nick with sandbags, another is putting its Christmas tree underground and others are cranking up noisy generators to keep the holiday spirit alive.
Thousands of Ukrainian children have been transferred to Russia. “I didn’t want to go,” one girl told The New York Times from a foster home near Moscow.