The war in Ukraine has been going on for a thousand days. It is a thousand days of suffering, fighting for survival and hiding in cellars. According to UNICEF, the Russians have killed or injured more than 2,400 children since February 2022. In Kharkiv, education went underground.
Colorful desks and chairs, walls decorated with pictures – it looks like an ordinary classroom, but it is far from an ordinary school. In Kharkov, under constant shelling, six educational institutions were built underground, each in a different metro station.
About five thousand children whose parents decided not to flee. Today, metro stations are the safest place in the whole city. – In the summer of 2023, the Defense Council decided that the children could not be educated in regular institutions, so we had to find a solution. This is the front of our education, says Irena Tarasenko from the Department of Education of the city of Kharkiv.
Both students and teachers undergo regular medical examinations, during which specialists monitor how being underground and the war affects their health. Doctors check for signs of physical and mental stress.
– Children live under constant stress caused by many factors. They are subjected to constant fear and bomb attacks, says Dmitry Mitelyov, a neurologist.
Attack on a children's hospital in Kyiv. Record from July 8 Reuters
“The number of child victims is shocking”
According to UNICEF, at least 2,406 Ukrainian children have been injured or killed since the start of the all-out attack on Russia. This means that every week on average at least sixteen minors are victims of Putin's soldiers. The war has been going on for ten years for the children of Donbass.
– The number of child victims is shocking and unacceptable. Children are dying in their beds, in hospitals and on playgrounds, and devastated families are left with lifelong scars, says UNICEF's Catherine Russell.
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According to the UN, as of February 2022, more than 660 health facilities and nearly 1,500 educational facilities have been damaged or destroyed. Attacks on critical infrastructure cut off water, heat and electricity supplies.
Approximately 1.7 million minors do not have access to clean water and 3.5 million children do not have the opportunity to use sanitary facilities, which increases the risk of disease with the onset of winter. – Millions of children live in constant fear. Most of them spend up to six hours a day in the basement, hiding from attacks. Without sustained and increased support, the psychological scars from this war will be felt for generations to come, says Kathryn Russell.
Poznań. On the anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, children released doves as a symbol of peace 02/24.TVN 24
They are forcibly exported to Russia
Children are also forcibly taken to Russia, where they are fed propaganda, Russianized and taught to love Putin. They must also be trained to fight.
– Russians are trying to brainwash Ukrainian children. They exchange passport and birth certificate details. They militarize. All Ukrainian children must belong to Russian youth military organizations. Even girls, says Dmitry Lubinets, Ukrainian human rights spokesman.
Moscow claims that it is not kidnapping Ukrainian children, but taking them to Russia for its own security and benefit. In March of last year, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the President of Russia and the Russian Children's Rights Ombudsman, who are responsible for the deportation of Ukrainian children.
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Vladimir Putin and Maria Lviv-Belova are accused of war crimes. Lviv-Belova admitted that she adopted a teenage son from Mariupol, a city that was taken over by the Russians in the spring of 2022.
So far, the Kyiv authorities have managed to confirm about 20,000 cases of deportation, but the Russians themselves admit that they have deported up to several hundred thousand minors. Kiev managed to take only about a thousand of them home.
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Main image source: Enex
