 "PM Modi visits Martyrologist Exposition in Kyiv: How children have borne brunt of Russia-Ukraine war")
On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Martyrologist Exposition on children at the National Museum of History of Ukraine in Kyiv.
Modi, who is on a historic state visit to Ukraine, was accompanied by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The museum was set up in memory of children who have lost their lives in the conflict.
As per The Times of India, the exhibition examines biggest military conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries.
It also sheds light on the heroic struggle of Ukrainians for their freedom, independence and cultural identity.
“The conflict is particularly devastating for young children. My heart goes out to the families of children who lost their lives, and I pray that they find the strength to endure their grief,” Modi, honouring the memory of the deceased, said at the memorial.
The Indian prime minister also placed a toy at the exhibition as a mark of respect.
“Children in every country deserve to live in safety. We must make this possible,” Zelenskyy added.
Let’s take a closer look at how children have suffered during the Russia-Ukraine war:
Death and violence
According to the Georgetown University website, over seven million children have been impacted since the beginning of the war in February 2022.
The kids have witnessed violence, seen their families die, lost their homes and had their schooling interrupted.
UNICEF in May in a joint statement said around 2,000 children have been killed since the war began – around two children per day.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe UN’s Europe and Central Asia Regional Office and its regional director, Regina De Dominicis, said in a joint statement, “At least 1,993 children in Ukraine have been killed or injured since the escalation of war more than two years ago, an average of two child casualties each day.”
The agency said this number is what the it has been actually able to verify. It said that the actual figure is likely far higher.
In July, a strike on Ukraine’s largest children hospital left at least 42 dead.
Cardiac surgeon and anesthesiologist Dr Volodymyr Zhovni the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv told members of the UN Security Council that the ground shook and the walls trembled.
Both children and adults screamed and cried from fear, and the wounded from pain.
It was a real hell, he added.
Zhovni said he heard people crying out for help from beneath the rubble.
Most of the over 600 young patients had been moved to bomb shelters, except those in surgery, Zhovnir said.
He said over 300 people were injured, including eight children, and two adults died, one of them a young doctor.
Russia denies responsibility for the strike at the hospital, where at least two staffers were killed. Moscow has insisted that the building was struck by a Ukrainian air defence rocket.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in May noted that attacks in Kharkiv region had left civilians and several children dead.
Trauma
Experts say the war has impacted the mental health and wellbeing of children.
The UN noted that half of teenagers have admitted to having trouble sleeping.
One in five say they are having intrusive thoughts and flashbacks.
“As we see in all wars, the reckless decisions and actions of adults are costing children their lives, safety and futures. Beyond the killings of children and the physical harm caused by the attacks, many children across Ukraine have experienced levels of loss and violence harmful to their mental health and well-being. Half of young teenagers report having trouble sleeping, and 1 in 5 have intrusive thoughts and flashbacks,” the statement read.
“Two years of this war is wreaking havoc on children’s mental health now. They have not been anywhere near a classroom for years, and they have not seen their friends. Many of their friends have gone,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told Voice of America in February.
“I must have heard parents and psychologists talk to me about their concerns about socialisation of children, of little ones being scared in groups together, of teenagers that are never seeing each other,” he said.
“That isolation and lack of socialisation, I think, is just bringing home what everyone fears — that this psychological scarring after two years is becoming very pronounced among young people and among their parents.”
The outlet quoted UNICEF as saying that children in major cities have spent anywhere from four to seven months seeking refuge from the violence in basements and underground Metro stations.
It said this winter has been “particularly horrific for children, with thousands sheltering in cold, damp basements,” as increasing attacks have left many families without heat, water and electricity.
“The continued shelling leaves little opportunity for Ukraine’s children to recover from the distress and trauma associated with attacks,” UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell told the website.
“Every siren and explosion bring further anxiety. Education is a pillar of hope, opportunity and stability in children’s lives, but it continues to be disrupted or out of reach for millions of Ukraine’s children,” she added.
Elder said kids are being robbed of the experience of being children.
“And the war is not stopping,” Elder told VOA. “In fact, in some areas, it has deteriorated. It has got more intense in the last month or two. And that is pushing children further and further into their shells — more and more squashing their hopes.”
“Fewer and fewer children think about what they might want to do in six months or 12 months. Everyone I talk to says they take things day by day. As a woman said, our aim is to survive the night and then wake up in the morning,” he added.
Schooling disrupted
The schooling of millions of Ukrainian children has also been disrupted.
Human Rights Watch has estimated that 3,790 educational facilities have been damaged or destroyed since the beginning of the war.
VOA in February reported that just two out of 700 schools in Kharkiv continue to have in-person classes.
While most children are learning online, others have to head to five Metro stations that have been converted into underground schools.
Ukraine’s schools have been left a wreck.
Human Rights Watch compiled the 71-page report entitled Tanks on the Playground after visiting 50 schools in Kyivska, Kharkivska, Chernihivska, and Mykolaivska regions.
Nearly 90 school officials, representatives of local authorities, and eyewitnesses to Russia’s military operations were interviewed.
The report noted the damage to the schools from aerial attacks, artillery shelling, rocket strikes, and even cluster munitions.
The report detailed how Russian soldiers would loot and pillage schools – taking away desktop and laptop computers, televisions, interactive whiteboards, other equipment, and heating systems – which is a war crime.
Russia’s soldiers have also occupied schools – using it as quarters for their troops, keeping ammunition on hand, parking military vehicles on the premises – as a base to attack Ukrainian soldiers.
Moscow’s soldiers used Kyivska’s Borodianska school, for example, to fire on Ukrainian forces.
The school was left badly damaged by return fire.
Russian soldiers eventually left – but not before scribbling anti-Ukrainian graffiti and a flag with a Nazi swastika on the walls.
“It was impossible to hold back tears,” the school’s director said. “In the cafeteria, they [Russian forces] set up a bath [in the sink]. In another room there was blood on the walls. … They broke all the computers… and filled everything with dirt. … They simply stole the laptops.”
A woman living in Kharkivska’s Izium told Human Rights Watch she was struggling to give her 14-year-old son an education online.
“There is no internet, so no video lessons,” she said. “You can’t just [convey tasks to teachers] by phone, you need a laptop. He can’t set up the virtual classroom on his phone.”
“Ukrainian children have paid a high price in this war because attacks on education are attacks on their future,” said Hugh Williamson, director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch.
“The international community should condemn the damage and destruction of schools in Ukraine and looting by Russian forces.”
The UN noted, “Nearly half of children enrolled in school in Ukraine are missing out on in-person schooling, with almost one million children across the country not able to access any in-person learning at all due to insecurity. UNICEF is working across Ukraine to rehabilitate schools and shelters and provide at-home learning kits and online learning support to children. Last year alone we reached 1.3 million children with formal and non-formal learning opportunities and 2.5 million children and caregivers with mental health and psychosocial support services.”
The agency has called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and for “all children to be protected from harm.”
“Ukraine’s children urgently need safety, stability, access to safe learning, child protection services, and psychosocial support. More than anything, Ukraine’s children need peace,” the agency noted.
Deportation and ‘re-education’
Worse, tens of thousands of children have been forcibly snatched away from their families.
Kyiv has said it estimates around 20,000 children have been taken from Ukraine to Russia without family or guardians’ consent.
However, it noted that the actual figure could be higher.
The Georgetown University website stated that many children have been taken to Russia and Belarus.
Some have been placed in foster care and made Russian citizens, while others have been sent to camps for ‘patriotic re-education.’
Just under two per cent of abducted children have been returned to Ukraine.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) had issued warrants against Putin and children’s ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova on war crimes charges related to the abduction of Ukrainian children.
Speaking on the sidelines of an international summit in Switzerland about the war in June, Mykola Kuleba, the leader of a Ukrainian charity working to return the children, said “Russia is stealing our future.”
“They base their strategy on deception, indoctrination of children, and genocide of the Ukrainian nation,” Kuleba, founder and CEO of Save Ukraine, told an event in Lucerne, close to the mountain resort where world leaders were gathering.
He told the story of an eight-year-old girl who was sent to a Russian camp he said was designed to eradicate her Ukrainian identify.
“Children are forbidden to speak Ukrainian or display any Ukrainian symbols. Children are severely punished if they resist singing the Russian anthem,” he said.
The names and dates of birth of children are also routinely changed by Russian authorities, he added.
Save Ukraine has returned 373 children, including 88 orphans, Kuleba said, adding that many returnees showed signs of trauma.
He mentioned a 5-year-old boy who saw his father being beaten by occupying soldiers, which left him with nightmares and debilitating fear.
Kuleba called for an international effort to gather information about the abducted children and return them home.
The Kremlin rejects the allegations.
It claims to have only been protecting vulnerable children from a war zone.
It denounced the warrants as “outrageous and unacceptable.”
Lvova-Belova rejected the accusations as false.
With inputs from agencies
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