Ukraine has reported devastating figures as the conflict affects the nation’s youngest residents. The juvenile justice system in Ukraine confirmed on Saturday that more than 360 children have lost their lives and roughly seven hundred and ten have sustained injuries since the invasion began in late February. The numbers reflect a grim pattern of harm endured by families across multiple regions and underscore the far-reaching toll of the hostilities on civilian life, particularly among those who are underage and most vulnerable.
According to the Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office, the highest concentration of child casualties is in the Donetsk region, where the impact has been most severe. The tally there reaches three hundred seventy-five for killed and injured combined. Following Donetsk, the Kharkiv region shows nearly two hundred casualties among children, with the capital city Kyiv recording over a hundred incidents. Other hard-hit areas include Chernihiv, where the toll stands at sixty-eight, as well as Luhansk, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Zaporizhia, Sumy, and Zhytomyr, each reporting significant, painful totals in the thousands of affected lives overall. These regional disparities illustrate how some locales bear the brunt of bombardment and displacement more than others, complicating relief and accountability efforts across the country.
The prosecution also noted that Russian bombings have devastated the education sector. In total, more than two thousand three hundred and twenty-eight educational institutions have been damaged, with two hundred eighty-nine of them left completely destroyed. The data, compiled by the Ukrainian portal Censor, highlights the wholesale disruption to schooling, access to learning, and the safety of students and teachers alike. The destruction of schools represents not only an immediate risk to children but a longer-term setback to the country’s educational development and regional stability, as communities struggle to rebuild schooling infrastructure and restore a sense of normalcy for families who have endured repeated rounds of strikes and shelling.