Russia is intentionally targeting Ukrainian children as an act of war

It is increasingly difficult to determine how many Ukrainian children have been killed, injured or severely traumatized by Russia’s brutality since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The latest formal reports from United Nations agencies suggest that some 500 children have been killed and more than 800 severely injured as collateral casualties of the war.  

Actually, as we have just learned, the reality is that the number of children murdered is likely to be far higher. It has just been reported that Russian stormtroopers, including hardcore convicts recruited by the Wagner Group, Putin’s mercenary force, have been killing children and other civilians in the territories they occupy in Eastern Ukraine. 

In an extraordinary report posted on Telegram by a Russian human rights organization, two men claiming to be former Wagner fighters describe how they were ordered to kill civilians. This included instructions to “clean up” in a basement in Bakhmut, where 300-400 civilians, including about 40 children as young as 5 years of age, had sought shelter. According to reports, mercenaries fully complied with kill orders, using guns, knives and sledgehammers, mutilating some of the victims.  

Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin reportedly denied the allegations, but even before they were disclosed, it was abundantly clear that children were being disproportionately impacted by the brutality of Russian aggression.

After months of delicate negotiations with Russian authorities, the Kyiv-based organization Save Ukraine announced on April 8 the repatriation of 31 children who had been kidnapped by Russian military forces occupying large swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine.  

Many of the older kids finally reunited with their families had been told by their captors they’d be attending a two-week camp. Well, it wasn’t “camp,” it wasn’t “two weeks” and it’s not just a few dozen children that have been forcibly abducted by hostile forces since the war began. 

The current official estimate from the Ukrainian government suggests that more than 19,000 children, including many from institutions caring for children with special needs, have been taken to Russia without parental consent. Some have been sent to “reeducation camps” — and some put up for adoption into Russian families.  

Meanwhile, today in Ukraine, the parents of kidnapped children still missing are in a continuous state of grief and desperation, unable to find out where their children are or how to reach them.

Yuliia Kardash, the regional director for the Ukraine Children’s Action Project and a mother of two boys who lives in Lviv, far from the battlefields in the east, told me during a phone call, “No matter where we live, the fear of losing our own children is always with us. For all Ukrainians, it’s one of the biggest horrors of the war.”

The international community has reacted strongly to these abductions, which are gross violations of the 1949 Geneva Convention and its supplementary provisions passed in 1977, the 1951 Geneva Convention and the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Because of the clear human rights violations — specifically, the unlawful deportation of children — the U.N.’s International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued warrants for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova — who has the ironic, call it Orwellian, title of Russia’s human rights commissioner. Lvova-Belova is thought to be the official who devised the mass child abduction idea, which she personally presented to an all-ears Putin, who ordered immediate implementation of the scheme.  

And now, with news of the cold-blooded killing of civilians, should Putin and his senior government and military officials be charged with the more serious crime of genocide if the allegations are proven to be true? 

It is fair to say that this war has become a major public health crisis for Ukraine’s youngest citizens. As a pediatrician, I worry that long-term psychological stress will potentially lead to a difficult mental health crisis in the years to come. Additionally, for the millions of children who had to evacuate areas under Russian attack, getting access to health care — especially for those with chronic medical conditions — has been extremely difficult. And for those who had to remain in occupied territories, where unrelenting attacks have targeted health care facilities, the situation is dire. 

Loss of family income, destruction of homes and community infrastructure, along with reduced access to medical care, are some of the hallmarks of a deteriorating social structure and a badly damaged economy. The percentage of Ukrainian kids living in poverty has increased from about 43 percent prior to the invasion to 82 percent after more than a year of war. 

Another 2 million children, 90 percent of whom left Ukraine with mothers or other women caretakers, have taken up temporary residence in Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Moldova and other welcoming countries. (Dads are generally required to remain in Ukraine to serve in the military or work on humanitarian projects.)   

For the most part, these war refugees have been treated with an extraordinary degree of support and kindness by their hosts, virtually all providing opportunities for Ukrainian refugee children to attend schools. And some, like Poland, provide a full range of social support services to the Ukrainians who have come to stay in Poland, presumably until the war ends.  

However, although Poland has made its schools available to all Ukrainian children and Germany requires attendance in German schools for all refugees, there are major problems in educational continuity for displaced children. For those kids who attend school in other countries, instruction is almost always in the native language of the hosts and course content is entirely about the history and culture of that country. 

And of some 800,000 Ukrainian children in Poland, no more than a third are attending any kind of appropriate in-person school. Some of the children not attending school in Poland may be learning online. How many are? Nobody knows, including Polish and Ukrainian education officials, as well as UNICEF representatives who are supposed to be monitoring education access for refugee children. 

Ukrainian families and President Volodymyr Zelensky see this as an enormous long-term problem. To be clear, the leaders of Ukraine expect families and children who are temporarily refugees to return when the war is finally over. 

Ukraine will need young Ukrainians and skilled workers who have sought safety during the war to help their country recover and rebuild when peace is restored. For that to be possible, however, Ukrainian kids will need to be educated — and retain a strong attachment to their home country, including an internalized understanding of its unique history and traditions.  

There’s no escaping the conclusion that Vladimir Putin’s intention is not simply to annex more territory on Russia’s western border with NATO as a defensive strategy. He wants to undermine and ultimately destroy Ukraine, in part by going after children. As a purely humanitarian matter, that cannot be allowed to happen. And as his aggression is a clear threat to Western democracy, we have every reason to make sure that Ukraine gets all the support it needs to neutralize Putin’s aggression.

Irwin E. Redlener, MD, (@IrwinRedlenerMD) is a cofounder of the Children’s Health Fund, cofounder of the Ukraine Children’s Action Project and a public health analyst for NBC/MSNBC. Founding director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. He is the author of, “Americans at Risk: Why We’re Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Can Do Now,” and “The Future of Us: What the Dreams of Children Mean for 21st Century America.”