Ukraine has lost about 20,000 children in 10 years of war - Save Ukraine
Many children taken from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine to the Russian Federation have already grown up or are being brought up as Russians. There may be about 20 thousand such children.
This was said by the founder of Save Ukraine, Mykola Kuleba, in an interview with Online.UA.
According to him, during the 10 years of the Russian Federation's war against Ukraine, the enemy may have about 1.5 million children in its power - this is 15 to 20 per cent of Ukraine's child population.
Only in Crimea there were about half a million children. There were a million children in Donbass, two thirds of them were in the occupation immediately in 2014," Mykola Kuleba said.
He emphasised that there are no exact statistics on the number of children who left for Ukraine or other countries. The data can be roughly calculated on the basis of statistics from the temporarily occupied territories during the full-scale invasion. Thus it is known that more than one million Ukrainian children are either under occupation or have been deported to Russia.
In addition, the Russians say that 744 thousand children were registered after the full-scale invasion. Kuleba noted that we can question this figure, but even if the number of children is lower "it is still a very big figure."
We don't know today how many thousands of children live in the occupied territories, because this figure does not exist. But we can talk about approximate figures of how much child population has been lost in 10 years. Exactly lost, because they are growing up today as Russians. They have come to terms, many have already grown up... They have become adults who were formed either in the occupation or on the territory of Russia. This figure is about 20 thousand, - said Nikolai Kuleba.
According to him, we are talking only about the children that Ukraine managed to identify. In fact, there are more of them.
We shall remind you that earlier the human rights ombudsman said that Russia had deported at least 19,546 children. It is also known that the Russian military killed 512 Ukrainian children and maimed another 1,158. Another 75 children suffered torture, and the prosecutor's office recorded 13 cases of sexual abuse of minors.
In addition, 120,000 children affected by the war have been registered on the territory of Ukraine. According to the Minister of Social Policy, their number continues to increase.