Since February 2022, Russians have killed or injured over 2,400 children in Ukraine

Colorful desks and chairs, walls decorated with pictures – on the surface this place looks like a normal classroom, but it is far from an ordinary school. In Kharkov, under constant shelling, six educational institutions were built underground, each in a different metro station.

About five thousand children whose parents decided not to escape attend them. Today, metro stations are the safest place in the entire city. – In the summer of 2023, the Defense Council decided that children could not study in regular institutions, so we had to find a solution. This is our educational front line – says Irena Tarasenko from the education department in Kharkov.

Both students and teachers undergo regular medical examinations, during which specialists monitor how long-term stay underground and war affect their health. Doctors check for signs of physical and mental stress.

– Children live under constant stress caused by many factors. They are exposed to constant bomb scares and attacks – points out Dmytro Miteljow, neurologist.

According to UNICEF, at least 2,406 Ukrainian children have been injured or killed since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion. This means that on average at least sixteen minors fall victim to Putin's soldiers every week. For the children of Donbas, the war has been going on for ten years.

– The number of child victims is shocking and unacceptable. Children die in their beds, in hospitals and on playgrounds, leaving devastated families with lifelong injuries, emphasizes Catherine Russell from UNICEF.

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According to the UN, since February 2022, over 660 health care facilities and nearly 1,500 educational institutions have been damaged or destroyed. Attacks on critical infrastructure disrupted water, heating and electricity supplies.

Approximately one million 700 thousand minors do not have access to clean water, and nearly 3.5 million children do not have the opportunity to use sanitary facilities, which increases the risk of illness with the upcoming winter. – Millions of children live in constant fear. Many of them spend up to six hours a day in basements, hiding from attacks. Without continued and increased support, the psychological wounds caused by this war will be felt for generations to come, says Catherine Russell.

Children are not the only victims of Russian missiles. They are also forcibly taken to Russia, where they are fed propaganda, Russified and taught to love Putin. They are also to be trained to fight.

– Russians are trying to brainwash Ukrainian children. They change the details in their passports and birth certificates. They are militarizing. All Ukrainian children must belong to Russian youth military organizations. Even girls, says Dmytro Lubinets, Ukrainian human rights spokesman.

Moscow claims that it is not kidnapping Ukrainian children, that it is taking them to Russia for security reasons and for their own good. In March last year, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the president of Russia and the Russian children's rights ombudsman, who are responsible for the deportation of Ukrainian children.

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Vladimir Putin and Maria Lviv-Belova are accused of war crimes. Lviv-Belova admitted that she adopted a teenage boy from Mariupol – a city that was captured by the Russians in the spring of 2022.

So far, the authorities in Kiev have managed to confirm about 20,000 cases of deportation, but the Russians themselves admit that they have deported up to several hundred thousand minors. Kyiv managed to bring only about a thousand of them home.