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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Since 24 February, at least 220 children have been killed as a result of the war in Ukraine started by Russia. Those deaths are very different. Some children died during indiscriminate shelling of residential neighborhoods, some were shot by Russians in a car along with their parents, some died hiding at home, and others were killed while trying to evacuate.
Footage of dead Ukrainian children became heavy symbols of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2022. For example, the video of a 6-year-old girl from Mariupol, filmed by Associated Press correspondent Mstyslav Chernov 28 February.
In that video doctors try to save the girl, who was severely wounded as a result of Russian shelling. While attempting to resuscitate the child, one of the doctors turns to the camera and says:
“Show that Putin motherf***er these eyes, this child, and the doctors who are crying. F***ing scum, I hope he dies, bastard!”.
They were unable to save the girl. Her name remains unknown to the general public. Mstyslav Chernov does not know it either. “I know that she was buried in a mass grave,” Chernov only replied to Bihus.Info’s question.
Despite this anonymity, the footage of the child circulated around the world. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy showed the video, which also contained footage of the girl, during his address to the U.S. Congress.
More than a month later, the deaths of children at the hands of Russian forces again became a visual symbol of the war in Ukraine. On 8 April, Russian forces struck Kramatorsk railway station with a Tochka-U missile—at a time when a large number of people had gathered there to evacuate.
Russia immediately tried to cover up the crime, using its now-traditional disinformation. In particular, the Russian Defense Ministry denied that Russian forces use the Tochka-U missile system at all. That claim was thoroughly refuted by the international investigative network Bellingcat.
That same day, on 8 April, preliminary information emerged that 50 people were killed by the Tochka-U strike, five of them children. Later, two more children died in hospital.
A photo of a bloodied toy rocking horse on the ground near the Kramatorsk station swept the global media. A stylistically edited image of the toy horse began to be used on social networks to tell about Russian war crimes in Ukraine and at memorial actions for children killed by Russian aggression, including abroad. The toy from Kramatorsk itself was handed over by Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi to the U.N. crisis coordinator in Ukraine and to the Secretary-General’s representative Amin Awad.
However, the killing of children did not stop between the incidents in Mariupol and Kramatorsk, and continued afterward. On the eve of Easter, on 23 April, Russia carried out cruise missile strikes on Odesa. One of the missiles hit a residential complex, killing local resident Valeriia Hlodan and her 3-month-old daughter. Valeriia had celebrated her 28-th birthday just a week earlier.
That same day, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during a press conference for foreign and Ukrainian journalists, spoke about the death of the child. He called the Russians who carried out the missile strike “stinking scum.”
In the “Traces of War” series, the Bihus.Info editorial team has already written about children's deaths resulting from Russian attacks on residential buildings. For example, on 3 March Russian forces carried out aerial bombing of Chernihiv. One strike completely destroyed the private home of Svitlana Zheldak. 5 members of her family died in the house, including her 14-year-old son, her 21-year-old daughter, and her husband.
Sources in law enforcement provided Bihus.Info with details of a number of other child deaths from Russian aggression. We selected cases that received much less media attention than those described above. Each of them deserves separate mention and a full investigation. It is important both to know about and to speak about these deaths.
On 28 February between the villages of Buzova and Hurivshchyna in the Kyiv region, 13-year-old Rostyslav Pichkur, a student in 7 grade at Kyiv Specialized School No. 14, was killed. Rostyslav’s family tried to hide from Russian shelling in a forest. A shell exploded on the road nearby. Shrapnel struck Rostyslav in the arm and chest. He died on the spot.
On 1 March Russian forces shelled the television tower at Dorohozhychi in Kyiv and the territory of the Babyn Yar memorial nearby. From that shelling, 6-grade student Kateryna Pikhr was killed along with her mother.
On 5 March in the village of Mishkovo-Pohorilove in Mykolaiv region, 4-year-old Arina Butyr was killed as a result of Russian shelling.
On 7 March in the city of Sumy, an airstrike with 500-kilogram bombs on residential buildings killed at least 18 people. Among them was 9-year-old Vadym Ivliev.
That same day, Russian airstrikes on Sumy killed three brothers: 5-year-old Kyrylo Prymenko, 11-year-old Yehor Prymenko, and 16-year-old Artem Prymenko.
On 17 March, as a result of shelling of the village of Novi Petrivtsi in the Kyiv region, 2-year-old Stepan Shpak was killed.
Children are killed by Russian aggression not only in shelling of ordinary residential buildings. There have also been recorded cases of shelling of kindergartens and other institutions for children.
The most well-known case is the airstrike on a children’s hospital in Mariupol, carried out by the Russians on 9 March. At least one child was killed then. The fact that Russian forces did attack that building was acknowledged by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who explained it by claiming that there were supposedly firing positions of the city’s defenders located there.
However, there were more cases of attacks on infrastructure intended for children. According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, on 25 February Russians struck a kindergarten in Okhtyrka in Sumy region with Uragan rockets, killing a 7-year-old girl. In Chernihiv Russian forces also shelled a kindergarten, and in Kyiv the Okhmatdyt hospital came under fire.
Finally, Russians kill Ukrainian children not only with missile strikes and long-range shelling. There are also cases of nearly point-blank shootings. For example, on 13 March, near the village of Havronshchyna a Russian BMP fired at close range on a convoy of civilian cars trying to evacuate from Bucha district. In one of the cars, children aged 2 and 14 years were killed.
https://bihus.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/facebook-video-1374556789674890.mp4
Children were also killed by Russians during the genocide in towns and villages of the Kyiv region, notably in Bucha. Their bodies were found right on the streets after Russian troops withdrew. In some places Russians tried to hide the traces by burning the corpses.
The total number of children killed and deceased as a result of Russian aggression is almost certainly much higher than the official figures given by the Prosecutor General’s Office. In particular, because there is no way to record crimes in temporarily occupied territories, above all in Mariupol.
It was in Mariupol that the Russians on 25 March carried out an airstrike on the drama theater, in whose basements more than a thousand civilians were sheltering. The exact number of those killed in that attack is still unknown. But it is known that the word “Children” was written in large letters on the ground near the drama theater on both sides. The Russians could not have failed to see it. The question is only whether it simply did not stop them, or whether it served as further encouragement.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "“Її поховали в братській могилі”. Діти, вбиті росіянами в Україні (ФОТО 18+)". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Bihus.Info.
