Prosecutor General: 520 Children Killed in Ukraine Due to Russian Invasion

KYIV, UKRAINE, Jan 18 — More than 1715 children have suffered in Ukraine as a result of the Russian full-scale armed aggression. According to the official information of the juvenile prosecutors, as of the morning of January 18, 2024, 520 children were killed and more than 1195 were injured of varying severity.

Officials add that these figures are not definitive. Work is ongoing to establish them in the areas of hostilities, on the temporarily occupied and liberated territories.

The most affected regions are the following:

• Donetsk – 504,
• Kharkiv – 315,
• Kherson – 145,
• Kyiv – 130,
• Dnipro – 111,
• Zaporizhzhia – 100,
• Mykolaiv – 101,
• Chernihiv – 72,
• Luhansk – 67.

On January 17, a 10-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl were wounded by shelling in Malyi Burluk village, Kupiansk district, Kharkiv Oblast.

Children in war is one of the most painful topics in the context of hostilities. This category of people is the most vulnerable and unprotected, both physically and psychologically. As practice shows, in addition to the danger of being injured by unexploded shells and bullets, children are subjected to violence at the hands of the Russians, intimidation, deportation, and militarization.

The killing and injury of Ukrainian children are not the only cases of Russian war crimes – recently, it was reported that the name and surname of a child from Kherson, who was taken before the city was liberated in November 2022, was illegally changed.

10-month-old Margarita Prokopenko was in an orphanage in Kherson during the Russian occupation of the city. From there, she was taken to Russia, allegedly for “medical examinations and rehabilitation.” Media reports say that the girl’s name and citizenship were changed later. Thus, Margarita became Marina Mironova. It is also known that a two-year-old boy, Ilya Vashchenko, was probably taken with the girl. His fate is not yet known.

The adoption of Ukrainian children in Russia is illegal. According to international and national norms, for foreigners to adopt a Ukrainian child, they need to notify Ukraine and obtain consent for the adoption. However, Russia is trying to get around this and forcibly grants Ukrainian children Russian citizenship.

Such actions by the Russian Federation grossly violate the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, which stipulates the obligation of the occupying power not to change the civil status of children, as well as the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

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