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The youngest killed was two days old.
When a nation goes to war, the heavy costs are often measured in ruined infrastructure, lost territory, and the number of casualties on the battlefield.
Yet the true damage of any major conflict cannot be seen on a map or tallied on a financial balance sheet. Instead, the real tragedy unfolds in the quiet spaces of everyday life.
Hundreds of children lost
In a post on X, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that at least 707 children have been killed and 2,548 others injured by Russian forces since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
“Every death is a child whose future was taken away. Russia must be held accountable for these crimes,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.
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Vanished without a trace
In another post on X, Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, explained that at least 2,318 children remain missing.
“The actual figures could be much higher because we still do not know the full truth about what has happened in the temporarily occupied territories. In addition, thousands of our children have been deported to Russia or forcibly displaced,” Lubinets said.
The violence has spared no age group. In one devastating case in 2023, a two-day-old infant died when the maternity ward of a hospital was struck in a Russian bombardment.
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Deportation amounts to a crime against humanity
On top of the horrifying numbers above are the Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia.
In March, the BBC reported that Ukraine says almost 20,000 Ukrainian children have been illegally transferred to Russia and Belarus.
The UN Commission had, at the time, identified more than 1,200 cases, and according to a UN report, the Russian deportation of Ukrainian children amounts to a crime against humanity.
Moscow has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, claiming that the children in question were actually being saved from a war zone.
