Russia's war taking a toll on Ukrainian children
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is nearing the one year mark, has had a profound and disastrous impact on the children of Ukraine.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is nearing the one year mark, has had a profound and disastrous impact on the children of Ukraine.
More than 450 children have been killed in the war, and more than 900 have been physically injured, according to the Office of the Prosecutor General as gathered by the Children of War government project, which noted that it’s “impossible” to calculate the exact number due to active hostilities and Russian-occupied territory. The Russian military has also forcibly taken hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children from their families and deported them to Russia.
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Specifically, a source in security structures told Russian state media TASS earlier this month that the Russian forces have deported 728,000 children. In July 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of having detained or deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians through their "filtration camps," including 260,000 children.
U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Michael Carpenter told the Washington Examiner in an interview that the organization is trying to help Ukraine track the children who were separated from their families so they can one day be reunited.
Such behavior "is really just disgusting, despicable behavior from Russia's forces and its internal security apparatus," he explained. "So, we want to expose this, but we also want to have accountability, and with the children, we want to reach them at some point in the future. So, that's why it's imperative that we act as soon as possible to document what kids are missing and where they might be so that at some point in the future, we can try to find these kids and reunite them with their families. Some are orphans, but often, many of them have family in Ukraine, whether it's grandparents or aunts and uncles, and so, they're sort of put up for adoption in Russia."
OSCE, an international organization that consists of 57 countries, including Russia, wants to "work with Ukraine to find a niche where we can help Ukraine to develop the tools they need to be able to work on this problem, and that's going to take expertise," Carpenter added, citing the "Dirty War" in Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s, where roughly 30,000 people were made to disappear and people spent years trying to track down their loved ones.
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Many of the children lost their parents in the war, which has claimed the lives of more than 7,000 Ukrainian civilians and injured more than 11,400 others, according to an update this week from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Most of the casualties "recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects, including shelling from heavy artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, missiles and air strikes," it said, noting the numbers are probably larger given the limitations and the difficult nature of gathering information in a war zone and occupied territory.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/russia-war-ukrainian-children