Ukrainian children celebrate Children's Day under shadow of war

International Children's Day, celebrated every year on June 1 in some countries, is overshadowed by the war in war-torn Ukraine. The Moscow-Kyiv war, which started in February 2022, has profoundly affected the lives of children and millions of civilians in Ukraine. Ukrainian sources report that around 500 children have died, and 1,000 have been injured. Children have been forced to leave their native land and live in unfamiliar places, while those who remained in Ukraine were either killed or injured, or tried to get used to the sounds of explosions and sirens on a daily basis. In eastern Ukraine's Kharkiv region, where heavy clashes took place from the first day of the war and many settlements were destroyed, thousands of children could not return to their homes. 'Volunteers rescued us under the attacks on Sept. 29 and brought us here. We became refugees in our country,' Valodya Kravchenko, the father of eight children, told Anadolu. Expressing his reluctance to have his children live in the village of Kuriivka in the Kupiansk district, from which they were evacuated, Kravchenko described the September attacks as 'terrible.' Fifteen-year-old Olesia, one of Kravchenko's daughters, recalled the early days of the war, saying: 'We had moments of fear. At that time, our brother was studying in Kharkiv, and we were very worried about him as the city was being bombed.' Olesia's older sister Miroslava said they were at home when the Russia-Ukraine war started and that they took shelter at a warehouse. Natalya Kucherenko, 40, who was evacuated from the village of Vilshana with her family, said they could not return home for months. Kucherenko further revealed that she lost her eldest son, 18 years old, during an attack, while her middle son was wounded in the shoulder and lung. Meanwhile, 15-year-old Ilia Gavrashchenko, who lost her brother and was injured in an attack in September 2022, stressed that she could not forget what happened on the day of the attack.