Ukrainian children – Russian invadors’ victims

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Оnline-newspaper PolitArena’s team is documenting the crimes of Russian soldiers against Ukrainian children. Maybe you have information related to the topic and you could share it, please write our e-mail: politarena@ukr.net.

 

On 8 August, the occupiers killed 6-year-old Dmytro and his 23-year-old brother Bohdan Shapoval. They were killed by Russians, who hit the village of Mohrytsia in Sumy region with a guided aerial bomb.

At around 11 o’clock, the brothers went for a walk near a local school. It was at that moment that Russian terrorists hit the school with a guided missile. The boys died on the spot.

 

• A 10-year-old boy, Maksym Simanyuk, as well as his mother and sister were killed during a massive attack on Kiev on 8 July.

“Maxim Simanyuk. On 8 July he, his mother and sister were killed by a Russian missile in the house. Maxim is forever 10 years old. Sincere condolences to his father, as well as the club “Champion”, where Maksym Simanyuk trained,” – reports the Ukrainian Karate Federation.

On the morning of 8 July, Russian troops carried out a massive rocket attack on Ukraine. The invaders directed more than 40 missiles of various types at Ukraine. In particular, on Kiev, Dnipro, Krivoy Rog, Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.

 

• On 28 May 2024, at 21:30, the enemy attacked the town of Selidove, Donetsk region, with two bombs, and one of them hit the place where a boy named Mykola Redko lived, he was 13 years old and studied in the seventh grade of Selidove Secondary School No. 1. Next to the boy’s body, rescuers found the body of Mykola’s father, Volodymyr.

The Selydovo Town military administration said that the boy was fond of natural sciences and spoke English very well.
In 2022, the boy and his mother moved abroad, first to the Czech Republic and then to Croatia. In the summer of 2023, he returned to the Selydovo community, lived with his father, and later did not want to go abroad. Just before the tragedy, he and his father were planning to evacuate to a safer place and were packing.

 

• 12-year-old Maria and her mother, Iryna Myronenko, a first-year student at the Catechetical and Pedagogical Institute of the Ukrainian Catholic University, were killed by Russians who fired missiles at the Epicentr hypermarket in Kharkiv on 25 May 2024.

The community of the Ukrainian Catholic University expressed its sincere condolences, especially to Iryna’s eldest daughter, 20-year-old Nadiya Fast, who also studies at the Institute, as well as to all her family and friends. Nadiya found her father in hospital with burns, and asked the police about her mother and younger sister.

“The whole family of the 20-year-old girl went shopping in the area where two bombs hit. Her 12-year-old sister and mother are no longer answering the phone, and they have not returned home. The father was with them – he is now in hospital with a concussion,” said Serhiy Bolvinov, head of the regional police investigation department.

• 12-year-old Danylo Zavoruev, who died in the evening of 27 March 2024 as a result of a rocket attack on Borova (Kharkiv region), was an internally displaced person who moved with his family from Pershotravneve due to constant Russian shelling.

He came under fire as he was approaching his home with his parents and died in hospital from shrapnel wounds.

 

• 9-year-old Veronika Khitsay and her father, 35-year-old Borys Khitsay, were killed by Russian terrorists on 22 March 2024 as a result of attacks on the city of Zaporizhzhia.

Fragments of their bodies were recovered from the rubble of their house and identified by DNA profiles, the National Police reported.

The occupiers launched a massive rocket attack, killing three people. 29 people were injured, 10 private houses were destroyed, and 400 more were damaged, said Ivan Fedorov, head of the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration.

The shelling of the city of Zaporizhzhia and the Zaporizhzhia region began at half past five in the morning on 22 March and lasted for several hours.

 

• On 14 February 2024, Russian terrorists killed a mother and her child, 36-year-old Natalia Stepanenko and 9-year-old Yaroslav Kamenev, in a hospital in the town of Selydove, Donetsk region.

The mother decided to leave the city for Kryvyi Rih. However, before the trip, Yaroslav suddenly fell ill. For several days, the boy had a temperature of 40 degrees, and it was possible to bring it down only with drips. So, unfortunately, Yaroslav had to stay in the hospital under drips until his temperature dropped and he recovered.
A pregnant woman died in the same hospital as a result of the shelling.

 

• On the night of 10 February 2024, Russians killed an entire family in Kharkiv: Grigory Putiatin, 38; Olga Putiatin, 35; Oleksiy Putiatin, 7; Mykhailo Putiatin, 4; Pavlo Putiatin, 10 months.

The family was burned alive as a result of a Russian drone attack on Kharkiv. According to Serhiy Bolvinov, head of the Investigation Department of the Main Department of the National Police in Kharkiv Region, the parents and their children hid in the basement during the air raids. But this time, flames burst into the yard. Everyone was trapped in a fire.

It was established that the older and younger boys were with their mother. The middle one, Mykhailo, always ran after his father. The man probably lost consciousness first, and the boy hid in a corner, alone in the kitchen. That’s where he was found. The mother and her other two sons tried to escape in the bathroom, holding the children in their arms.

Later, the youngest son was buried in the same coffin as his mother.

 

• On New Year’s Eve, 1 January 2024, 15-year-old Denis Melnyk, a 10th grade pupil, was killed during a prolonged attack by Russian strike drones on the civilian infrastructure of Odesa. The boy was killed in his apartment in front of his parents, according to the director of the Odesa educational complex “Gymnasium No. 7”.

 

• Russian terrorists killed 11-year-old Hlib Fedyuk during the shelling of Kherson on the last day of 2023. On 31 December, one of the Russian shells hit near the shop where the children were. Hlib died on the spot. Another 9-year-old child suffered a head injury.

Glib was a 5th grade student of the piano department of the Art School No. 1 in Kherson. Kherson. He had a great future as a pianist.

 

• Seven-year-old Bohdana Kosachenko’s life was taken by a Russian attack on the town of Seredyna-Buda in Sumy region. On 28 November 2023, at around 12:30, the enemy shelled the town. That day, her stepfather died along with Bohdana. They were both in a car when a rocket hit behind the car, right where Bohdana was sitting. Her stepfather was in front. They were both seriously injured. The girl died in her mother’s arms. The girl was helped by the store employees. The stepfather was taken to the intensive care unit in Shostka, where he later died too.

 

• Twelve-year-old Veronika from the Luhansk region died on the evening of 20 December 2023. It happened on a train on which she and 125 other children were returning from a so-called holiday in a children’s camp near Tyumen.

In the morning, the child’s temperature rose to 39 degrees, and she was given antipyretics. In the evening, the girl fainted and died. According to the Investigative Committee of Russia, the death was recorded by paramedics when the train was in the Penza region.

In the context of a full-scale invasion, the Nazis are deporting Ukrainian children en masse from the occupied territories of Ukraine. They are being taken to the occupied Crimea, Muscovy or Belarus, allegedly for rehabilitation or to rest in camps.

 

• The 4 children were watching cartoons and planning for the New Year when Russians started shelling Kherson on 20 December.

According to the head of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, the children were in their homes with their parents when the enemy attacked the city.

A 13-year-old girl sustained an explosive injury and a shrapnel wound to her leg. Medics treated her on the spot. The parents refused to hospitalise the child. Three other children, aged 2, 4 and 9, were in hospital with their

• On October 5, the Russian rocket hit a cafe and a shop in the village of Groza, Kupyansk district, Kharkiv region and killed the family of the deceased military man and almost everyone who came to commemorate him. Among the dead was a fallen soldier’s 8-years-old-nephew Ivan Kozyr.

 

• On 14 September 2023, after 00:00, the aggressors shelled the village of Novodmitrivka in the Kherson region with artillery. It is reported that racist war criminals killed 6-year-old Nazar Hrytskov when they hit a private house. His 13-year-old brother is now fighting for his life.

His grandfather and aunt were also wounded when they tried to get the children out of the rubble but also came under enemy fire. The whole family suffered from the Muscovite terror.

The boy’s aunt Galina Tykhonyuk said that Nazar had three other brothers (one of them is in a critical condition in a hospital). According to her, the family was going to evacuate on 14 September, in the afternoon.

 

• The farewell service for the six-year-old Sofia Golynska was held at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Chernihiv, reported online newspaper PolitArena.

The family decided to bury little Sofia in the Slavutych town. She was the only and long-awaited child in the family.

Before the full-scale invasion of the Rashists, the girl’s parents, Olga and Oleksandr, worked in the public service in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, where they lived. After 24 February 2022, Oleksandr went to the war front.

Olga and Sofia came to Chernihiv to visit him. The woman’s brother lives here.

They knew nothing about the drone exhibition at the drama theatre on 19 August 2023. They arrived to the city by train at about 11 a.m. on Saturday. They were met by relatives and brought to the centre. Olya’s friend was already there with her two daughters. The girls had just climbed up on the stage and were playing when there was a whistle and an explosion. In a moment, Sofiika fell on her mother, and blood was pouring out of the child’s stomach. And Olya’s leg was crushed by the stone. People stopped the car and asked to take the child to the hospital immediately. Sofia was still breathing, lying with her eyes open, her hands were warm.

Unfortunately, the girl was not saved – a fragment of a Muscovite missile hit her heart.

 

• Seven people including a 23-day-old baby girl were killed in Russian shelling in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on 13 August, the country’s internal affairs ministry said.

Artillery shelling in the village of Shiroka Balka, on the banks of the Dnipro River, killed a family – a husband, wife, 12-year-old boy and the 23-day-old girl – and another resident.

 

• Sisters Anna and Yulia Aksenchenko would have turned 15 in September. Twin sisters were killed in a missile strike in Kramatorsk on 27 June. Their mother is a surgeon in a local hospital.

Asked about the attack on Kramatorsk, the Kremlin said on Wednesday that Russia attacked only military targets, not civilian ones. Russia’s Defence Ministry later said a temporary Ukrainian army command post had been hit in Kramatorsk.

 

• Russian forces killed two Ukrainian teenagers – Tyhran Ohannisian and Mykyta Khanhanov – in temporarily occupied Berdiansk. Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets confirmed the information.

Before that, the invaders pursued, held captive, and tortured the boys allegedly for preparing sabotage on the railway. The Investigative Committee of Russia charged the teenagers with “violations” of the article, which provides for 10 to 20 years of imprisonment. At that time, the European Parliament demanded that the minors be released to the territory under the control of the authorities of Ukraine. However, the Russians placed Ohannisian and Khanhanov under house arrest in Berdiansk.

On June 24, the occupying authorities of Berdiansk reported the killing of teenagers whom they called “pro-Ukrainian terrorists.” The boys allegedly started shooting. Lubinets said that Russia extrajudicially executed two minors.

 

• After one of the Russian shellings on June 1, 9-year-old Victoria Ivashko and her mother were killed in Kyiv. According to President of the Judo Federation of Ukraine, the girl was a judoka. Last weekend she participated in a competition in Kyiv.  Tokyo Olympic medalist Daria Bilodid reacted to the tragedy and criticized the International Judo Federation (IJF) for allowing Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete.

 

• As a result of the bombardment of Molodizhne village in Kherson region, an 8-year-old girl suffered a brain contusion and was hospitalised. Two other children, a 10-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy, were diagnosed with an acute stress reaction. Doctors helped them on the spot.

 

• On 13 May 2023, the Rashists fired on Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region with a Smerch multiple rocket launcher system. Two people were killed, including 15-year-old Nadiya Lazebnik. The girl, born in Kostiantynivka, was a diligent pupil, loved to draw and dreamed that her future would be connected with art.

 

• On 28 April, 31-year-old Olga and her 3-year-old daughter Vika were killed by a Russian missile in the Dnipro region.

 

• One of two Russian bombs hit a village school in Chernihiv Region. At that time, 14-year-old Valentyn Mekhed was riding a bicycle nearby. He was a few meters from his house. A bomb fragment hit him in the neck and the child died instantly. According to the chief architect of the Novhorod-Siverskyi City Council, up to three dozen houses in the village were damaged by the air strike.

 

• 22 of 23 killed in the missle strike in Uman’ on the 28 of April. Among them children: Uliana Troychuk (8 years),  Sophia Shulga (11 years), Kurylo Pusarev (16 years), Oleksiy Lysak (15 years), Alina Barchenko (10 years), Ivan Odayskiy (1,5 years).

 

• On the night of April 9, 2023, Russian troops shelled Zaporizhzhia with S-300 missiles.

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, said the following about this terrorist act:

“They hit a house, an apartment building. Three people were inside. A man, a woman and a child – a girl, her name was Iryna, she would have turned 11 this year. She died. The man died too. My condolences… The woman is in critical condition, in the hospital, she is being provided with medical care.

This is how the terrorist state spends this Palm Sunday. This is how Russia puts itself in even greater isolation from the world, from humanity”.

 

 

 

 

• Russia has already deported more than 16,000 children from Ukraine.

 

• The Kremlin forcibly relocates and deports thousands of children from the occupied Ukrainian territories deep into Russia, using 43 camps and other facilities.

A relevant statement was made by Ned Price, Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, referring to the Conflict Observatory report.

“A report released today details Russia’s systematic government‑wide efforts to permanently relocate thousands of Ukraine’s children to areas under Russian Government control via a network of 43 camps and other facilities,” the representative of the U.S. Department of State said.

In many cases, Russia purported to temporarily evacuate children in Ukraine under the guise of a free summer camp, only to later refuse to return the children and to cut off all contact with their families.

“Such actions obviously will have serious long-term implications on these children’s development,” Price noted.

The Department emphasized that the illegal transfer and deportation of protected persons is a serious violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and a war crime.

In this regard, the United States called on Russia to immediately stop the forced relocations and return the children to their families and legal guardians.

 

• On January 14, a Russian missile hit an apartment block in Dnipro. A section with 72 apartments, which could accommodate up to 200 people, was destroyed. More than 300 apartments have been damaged.

As the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on January 16 “the enemy attack has taken the lives of 35 residents of the building. Among them are two children”.

Later the amount of victims icreased. A 15-year-old girl was among the dead.The youngest victi m was Mykyta, not even a year old. The family was at home at the time of the explosion. Only the boy’s mother, 27-year-old Kateryna Zelenska, was rescued.

 

• Since September 7, a total of 920 bodies of citizens, including 25 children, have been found in the de-occupied territories of the Kharkiv region. The Defense Forces have de-occupied 340 settlements in Bohodukhiv, Izium, Kupyansk, Kharkiv, Chuhuiiv, and Derhachi districts were deoccupied in the Kharkiv region, reported by the head of the National Security Service of Ukraine in the Kharkiv region, Volodymyr Tymoshko.

Kharkiv investigators documented the activities of 25 torture camps in the liberated territories.

“Electric torture, broken fingers, inhuman conditions of detention – this is what the “Russian peace” brought to our peaceful villages and cities,” Tymoshko added.

 

• Russian troops fired about seven projectiles at Kherson Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital. The neonatal department was seriously damaged. Two intensive care units were destroyed, and other medical rooms located in the main building were damaged. Over 700 windows were blown out.

Following Russia’s shelling, a fire broke out in a nurse’s room and hospital room.

The hospital staff evacuated 17 children, four parents and 38 health workers to a bomb shelter.

Yaroslav, a 13-year-old resident of Kherson Oblast, came under Russian shelling twice during the New Year holidays.

This was announced by Yaroslav Yanushevych, the head of the Kherson Oblast Military Administration.

On 31 December, just before the New Year, the Russians attacked the village of Naddniprianske, near Kherson.

13-year-old Yaroslav and his sister were coming home and came under shelling. The boy was taken to the hospital in serious condition, where doctors fought for his life.

On the first day of the new year, the Russians attacked the Kherson Oblast children’s clinical hospital, where Yaroslav was in the intensive care unit.

 

• A family of eight people, including four children, has been shot dead in temporarily occupied Makiivka, Donetsk Oblast. Petro Andriushchenko, Adviser to the Mayor of Mariupol, suggests that the murder was committed by mercenaries from the Russian private military company “Wagner”. According to Andriushchenko, this crime was openly ethnic in nature, as a family of Roma ethnicity had been killed. In addition, all those killed had bullet wounds to the head from close range.

 

• On December 17 Ukrainian rescuers have recovered the body of a one-year-old boy from the rubble of a residential building after a Russian attack on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.

 

• On November 23, as a result of shelling by Russian troops at the maternity ward of the Vilnianskyj hospital in the Zaporizhzhia region, an infant died.

 

• On November 22, as a result of enemy shelling in the city of Kherson, two boys aged 10 and 13 were injured.

 

• On November 20, Russian troops struck 10 settlements in the Donetsk region, among the wounded was a child. According to the National Police, the Russian military fired mortars at Vuhledar, injuring a child born in 2007. He is wounded in Bakhmut. 

 

• The Russian occupiers shot a family with two children in Zaporizhzhia Oblast on the night of 17-18 November.

 

• In Kherson region, on November 14 a baby was injured as a result of shelling by the Russian Federation. An enemy shell hit a private house, reported the police.

“A family was buried under the rubble. Two women died, a four-month-old boy with serious injuries is in the hospital of the city of Kryvyi Rih,” the report says.