Russia killed 547 children in Ukraine
24 May 2024 10:40
As a result of Russian armed aggression in Ukraine, 547 children have died, according to "Komersant Ukrainian" citing information from the Office of the Chief Prosecutor.
“More than 1895 children have suffered in Ukraine as a result of Russia’s full-scale armed aggression. As of the morning of 24 May 2024, according to official information from juvenile prosecutors, 547 children were killed and more than 1348 were injured of varying severity,”
– the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Children were most affected in the following regions: Donetsk – 532, Kharkiv – 374, Kherson – 152, Dnipro – 139, Kyiv – 130, Zaporizhzhia – 108, Mykolaiv – 105.
Yesterday, on 23 May, a 4-year-old girl died in Odesa after being seriously injured in a shelling on 29 April. Also yesterday, a 16-year-old boy was injured as a result of shelling in Dergachi, Kharkiv region.
Abduction of Ukrainian children by Russia
Russia not only kills but also abducts Ukrainian children. on 1 February 2024, Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andriy Kostin said that during the war, Russia forcibly removed 19,546 children from Ukraine under the guise of “humanitarian operations”.
“These children are not only displaced, but also deprived of their Ukrainian identity: they are granted Russian citizenship, placed in Russian families, forced to undergo re-education in Russian, and forbidden to speak Ukrainian. Teenage boys are often forced to participate in militarisation programmes,”
– Kostin said.
At the same time, this estimate of the scale of abductions of Ukrainian children is not the only one and certainly not the highest. In particular, the main organiser of these abductions, the so-called Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Russian Federation, Maria Lvova-Belova, in the summer of 2023, mentioned the figure of 744,000 Ukrainian children “taken by the Russian Federation”. Russia does not provide any data on this process and is not accountable to anyone, so it is almost impossible to verify the veracity of this statement.
Daria Gerasymchuk, the Ukrainian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, questions the figure quoted by Belova and believes that it is a standard exaggeration of Russian propaganda. The Ukrainian side estimates that there may be 200-300,000 abducted Ukrainian children. These estimates are approximate, as we are talking about children from the occupied territories and information about them is collected in a variety of ways.
However, the Ukrainian side has absolutely accurate data on abductions, including personal data, only for 19,546 children. That is why this figure is officially announced, although everyone understands that it is quite far from reality.
