CHILDREN DURING THE RUSSIAN WAR AGAINST UKRAINE

Living the War is a book documenting life during the Russia–Ukraine war. Its second volume focuses on the children’s experiences during the Russian military invasion. Through eight personal stories, it unveils the challenges, sorrows, and aspirations of young individuals aged 10 to 18. The book helps to understand the scale of the events and the context behind the children’s lives during the war. It includes a series of interviews and a collection of photo stories representing war’s impact on children’s lives.

There is a territory slightly bigger than the Netherlands that has been under Russian occupation since the full- scale invasion started (as of April 2024). Neither the international organizations nor the Ukrainian officials have complete access to clarify the numbers of killed, injured, or deported kids. This chapter helps to imagine the scale of the war, depicting Ukrainian cities after the Russian army invaded them.

In this volume, you will find stories of eight children. Those cases represent hundreds of thousands of young lives. Among them: evacuation, living under occupation, the torture chamber, wounds and recovery, surviving the shelling, loss of home, living in a war and deportation. Among them: evacuation, living under occupation, the torture chamber, wounds and recovery, surviving the shelling, loss of home, living in a war and deportation.

The volume also includes drawings created by kids during the war as a reflection of their experiences.

To understand the context of the children’s lives during the war, we talked to the Commissioner for Children’s Rights, the Prosecutor General, the representative of the “Bring Kids Back Ua” initiative, and the Ombudsman about Children’s rights violation, investigating russian war crimes, bringing children back from deportation.

To provide a broader picture, we worked with six photographers to create photo stories depicting the children’s lives during the Russian full-scale invasion. While you cannot hear the sound of air sirens or smell the air after a bomb hits a residential building, you can see the reality of brutal, unprovoked war through the lens of renowned photographers.