Every year on June 4, the world marks the International Day of Innocent Children – Victims of Aggression.
The date was introduced by the UN General Assembly in 1982 in response to the mass death of children during armed conflicts. For most countries, this is a reason to recall tragedies far from their own borders.
But for Ukraine, this date has a completely different meaning than for the rest of the world, because we are living through this horror every day. Russia has deliberately chosen the smallest Ukrainians as its targets.
– Ombudsman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Dmitry Lubinets.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has killed 707 Ukrainian children. Another 2,548 have been injured, and 2,318 are considered missing. Among the dead is a child who was two days old. She was born and died in a maternity hospital. This is the youngest victim of Russian aggression among children known to the Ombudsman.
These numbers may be significantly higher, because we still do not know the whole truth about the temporarily occupied territories. Moreover, thousands of our children have been deported to Russia or forcibly displaced.
– Lubinets.
Also, thousands of children have been deported or forcibly displaced by Russia. Their fate remains one of the key topics in negotiations with international partners.
Ukraine is working to return every deported child and is insisting on international pressure on Russia.
According to Lubinets, the world must clearly understand the scale: children are dying, being left without parents, or finding themselves in a foreign land, not due to natural disasters, but as a result of the conscious actions of an aggressor state.
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