More than 2 million children have left Ukraine due to the full-scale invasion by Russia.
The First Lady, Olena Zelenska, shared this information on Facebook along with a photo from last year's Time magazine's Top 100 issue, depicting young patients from Okhmatdyt Hospital in a bomb shelter, counting down the next Russian attack.
According to the First Lady, 528 children have perished at the hands of Russian bullets, rockets, drones. At least 1,230 children have been wounded, requiring prosthetic assistance in over 330 cases.
"More than 2 million of our children have fled the country to save themselves. More than a million children in Ukraine are studying entirely online because the enemy is attacking the frontline regions. And about 2,000 schools still lack bomb shelters," emphasized Zelenska.
The First Lady highlighted that over 19,000 children were abducted and taken to Russia from temporarily occupied territories.
"We have one-third fewer babies born - 187,000 in 2023 compared to 237,000 in 2021," she noted.
Zelenska stated, "Russia's unleashed war deliberately targets children. But they have us - their adults. We fight for them and will not surrender to the war. Every day, thousands of adults in Ukraine and around the world are treating, liberating from captivity, welcoming into families those who have lost their families, and building shelters for schools (my foundation is involved in this)."
She emphasized that it's impossible to restore the stolen two years of childhood, but it's possible to make it so that on February 24, 2022, it remains only "an episode. Dramatic, but only a fragment. Of a great, happy, and long life."
