KYIV, Ukraine \u2014 Mykola Kuleba looked stressed.<\/p>\n
The CEO of Save Ukraine listened carefully to his lead investigator whispering into his ear. He covered the microphone on his jacket.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s a very emotionally stressful day because we have our seventh rescue mission and we have a huge problem,” said the head of the Ukrainian nongovernmental organization at the start of an interview with NBC News earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Save Ukraine\u2019s seventh rescue mission, Kuleba said, was a group of Ukrainian mothers, grandmothers and other legal guardians of Ukrainian children who had been illegally deported and forcibly transferred to Russia and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.<\/p>\n
With Save Ukraine\u2019s training, planning and funding, these women were traveling through Poland, Belarus and Russia to find their children \u2014 a daring, 3,000-mile journey to the other side of the front line.<\/p>\n
But it wasn\u2019t going to plan.<\/p>\n
To learn more about “Saving Nikita” and Ukraine\u2019s fight to bring home children, tune into NBC News Now and MSNBC on Monday and Tuesday<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n “The FSB tried to block everything,” Kuleba said, referring to the Russian security services. “They imprisoned several of our mothers. One was deported and just now, my team met her on the border.”<\/p>\n The family was one of hundreds of thousands that the Ukrainians say have been torn apart deliberately by the Russian government, which faces allegations of war crimes.<\/p>\n Kuleba has worked in child protection for decades; before joining Save Ukraine, Kuleba held the post of ombudsman for children with the president of Ukraine for seven years. At the NGO level, he readily admits they\u2019re more nimble than the Ukrainian government.<\/p>\n “We can do things that governments simply can\u2019t,\u201d he told NBC News, without elaborating. But there was a hint of frustration that more than a year into this war, there wasn\u2019t more collaboration with major international organizations or the Ukrainian government.<\/p>\n As Kuleba spoke, a Ukrainian woman named Oksana Stetsenko was on a train from Moscow to Rostov in southwestern Russia. Stetsenko had joined the seventh rescue mission to find her 12-year-old son, Nikita, whom she hadn\u2019t seen in eight long months.<\/p>\n