Ukrainian prosecuters have revealed over 400 children have been killed by Russians since the start of the war (Picture: Shutterstock)
At least 437 Ukrainian children have been killed as a result of Russia’s invasion, according to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office.
More than 837 children have also been injured in a tally officials said was ‘not final’ because they were still verifying information from zones of active fighting, liberated areas and territory still occupied by Russian forces.
The eastern Donetsk region was the most affected, with 423 children killed or injured, the prosecutor’s office said.
The United Nations has said at least 16,295 civilians have been killed since the beginning of the invasion on February 24, which Kyiv and Western leaders have denounced as an act of unprovoked aggression. Moscow denies targeting civilians.
In a statement posted on Telegram, the PGO said: ‘As of the morning of November 19, 2022, 1,274 children were affected in Ukraine as a result of Russia’s full-scale armed aggression.
‘According to the official reports by juvenile prosecutors, 437 children were killed and 837 sustained injuries of varying severity.’
Donetsk is the worst affected region with 423 confirmed cases of dead or wounded children, with the number of cases in the following oblasts being reported as follows: Kharkiv (266), Kyiv (117), Mykolaiv (77), Zaporizhia (75), Chernihiv (68), Luhansk (64), Kherson (64), and Dnipropetrovsk (32).
Over 800 children have been confirmed to be wounded as a result of Russian military agression, along with many harrowing tales of sexual assault (Picture: Getty)
On November 18, Russian military personnel in the village of Komysh-Zorya in Zaporizhzhia murdered a family in their home, which included two children aged 5 and 14.
The previous day, a 4-month-old boy died of his injuries in a medical institution on November 17 after becoming severely wounded by shelling attacks in his village in Kharkiv.
The same day, another child was killed after his home was struck by a Russian missile in the town of Vilniansk in the Zaporizhia region.
Throughout the course of the war, 2,719 educational institutions have been damaged by shelling and missile strikes from Russian invaders, with 332 of them having been destroyed completely.
Earlier this year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russian troops of carrying out ‘hundreds of rapes’ in occupied territories, assaulting and murdering dozens of women and children, often in front of their own family members.
Speaking to Lithuanian lawmakers in April, Zelensky said: ‘In areas freed from the occupiers, the recording and investigation of war crimes committed by Russia continues. New mass graves are found almost daily.
‘Testimonials are being collected. Thousands and thousands of victims. Hundreds of cases of torture. Bodies continue to be found in drains and cellars.
‘Hundreds of cases of rape have been recorded, including those of young girls and very young children. Even of a baby!’
The scale of the brutality has led a Ukrainian rights group to inform the UN that rape is being used as a weapon of war by the Kremlin.
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More than 400 Ukrainian children have been killed and over 837 injured by Russians since the start of their invasion.
