Odessa, a coastal city in south-western Ukraine, is the country's most important port and a lifeline for its economy.
Over the past week, locals there have been using sand from a yacht club’s beach to barricade the city centre, amid the threat of an impending Russian invasion. Among those involved in building the barricade are children as young as eleven.
"We will defend Odessa and everything will be okay," said an eleven-year-old girl, as per a CNN report.
For the last one week, the city has lived in fear of an amphibious Russian landing, as Moscow strikes different parts of Ukraine.
Since 24 February, 17 children have been killed and 30 have been injured. These are only the reports that the United Nations has been able to verify – the true number of child casualties is likely far higher.
The conflict in Ukraine poses an immediate and growing threat to the lives and well-being of the country’s 7.5 million children. Humanitarian needs are multiplying by the hour as fighting intensifies. Children have been killed. Children have been wounded. And half a million children have fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries, with the number of refugees continuing to grow.
For many, it has meant sheltering in basements and subway stations while Russian forces attack cities and street fights rage. For others, it has meant a scramble to escape, leaving homes and fathers, taking trains and buses or walking for miles with their families in hopes of crossing into a safer country.
Some children have been killed or injured in the conflict. One 6-year-old girl in the southern city of Mariupol was hit during shelling. She was raced to the hospital in an ambulance but died as her parents, nurses and doctors wept.
The past eight years of conflict in eastern Ukraine have inflicted profound and lasting damage to children on both sides of the line of contact. Now, the suffering extends across the country. Hundreds of thousands of people are without safe water or electricity due to damage to infrastructure, and many have been cut off from health care.
The conflict in Ukraine, now in its second week, is exacting a harrowing toll on children, UNICEF warned today.
Millions of children could be caught up in the violence as the fighting intensifies in and around the country’s major urban centres. Children are especially vulnerable to being injured or killed when weapons and explosive munitions are used in populated areas.
“The use of explosive weapons in cities could quickly turn this crisis into a catastrophe for Ukraine’s children,” said Afshan Khan, UNICEF’s Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia. “There are no armed operations of this scale that do not result in children being harmed. The consequences will be tragic.”
The conflict has also sparked massive population displacement that could soon constitute one of Europe’s largest refugee crises since the Second World War. Half a million children have already fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries, with the number of refugees continuing to grow.
Hundreds of homes have been damaged or destroyed, and there are reports of schools, orphanages and health centres sustaining heavy damage.
Humanitarian needs across the country are multiplying by the hour. Hundreds of thousands of people are without safe drinking water because of damage to water system infrastructure and many have been cut off from access to other essential services like healthcare. The country is running low on critical medical supplies and has had to halt urgent efforts to curb a polio outbreak.
