On June 4, Ukraine honors the memory of children who died as a result of Russia's armed aggression against Ukraine. The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the relevant resolution on June 1, 2021.
The date of the commemoration was not chosen by chance, as every year on June 4 is the International Day of the Innocent Victims of Aggression, established by the United Nations General Assembly on August 9, 1982. Its appearance on the calendar confirms the UN's commitment to protecting children's rights.
For more than eleven years, Russia has been waging war against Ukraine. Every day the enemy illegally takes children to the temporarily occupied territories or to the Russian Federation. Every day they maim and kill our children.
Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion, the number of child casualties has been increasing every day. And the actual number of dead and wounded children cannot be established due to active hostilities.
More than 2590 children have suffered in Ukraine as a result of Russia's full-scale armed aggression. As of the morning of May 26, 2025, according to official information from juvenile prosecutors, 630 children were killed and more than 1960 were injured of varying severity (without fully accounting for those from the areas of active hostilities).
Children were most affected in the following regions: Donetsk - 645, Kharkiv - 492, Kherson - 208, Dnipropetrovs'k - 242, Kyiv - 146, Zaporizhzhia - 181, Mykolaiv - 119, Sumy - 139.
Now any words are superfluous... Children are dying... Tortured, raped, killed by rockets and shells, killed by mines and under the ruins.
Our future is dying in the center of Europe. We will never forgive, and we will always remember, because the memory of Ukrainian children killed will be an eternal scar and one of the most painful pages of our history.