Ukrainian children are dying at the hands of the Russian military. So, as of April 9, 2023, 468 children died due to the full-scale aggression of the Russian Federation. Another 947 children were injured with different severity levels. These figures are many times higher, since the exact number of victims in Donetsk, Kyiv, Kharkiv and other regions of Ukraine are still not known.There is not a day without attacks on civilians. Even before the Easter holiday, the Russians has continued to kill Ukrainian civilians. On April 9, the RF occupation army fired at the private sector of Zaporizhzhia, which killed a 10-year-old girl and her father. The Russian side did not admit that its missile hit a residential area. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the missile did not hit a residential area, but the “fuel storage of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” during the shelling of Zaporizhzhia on the night of April 9. A similar case was also in January, when during artillery shelling of the residential area of Bakhmut, the Russians killed a 12-year-old boy and 5 other citizens.
Ukrainian children are killed and taken away from their parents, forced to sing the Russian anthem and trying to adapt to Russian society. As of the beginning of March 2023, 43 institutions have been created on the territory of the Russian Federation, where little Ukrainians are “re-educated”. Now there are more than 6 thousand children in these “institutions”. There are cases of psychological and physical abuse of abducted children by Russians. Many children were beaten for remembering that they are Ukrainians, for refusing to sing the Russian anthem, for refusing to get up during the Russian anthem, for refusing to sing “Forward, Russia!” every morning. Children who were returned to Ukraine said they were forced to rewrite propaganda texts, their personal belongings were taken away, and they were forbidden to go outside.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced a conference that will be devoted to the return of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. The deportation of children is a crime of the Russian Federation, and not only against the Ukrainian people. These acts of Putin’s regime demand a tough response.