At least 85 children killed so far in Ukraine war: attorney general

At least 85 children have died in Russia’s war on Ukraine as of Sunday morning, according to the office of Ukraine’s attorney general.

Most of the children were killed in the regions of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Sumy, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr, according to the attorney general’s statement.

The statement added that 369 educational institutions have been damaged and 57 destroyed in Russia’s bombings and shellings in Ukraine.

The office’s count came from data from Ukraine’s juvenile prosecutors, according to The New York Times.

Among the children killed was a football player who was in a car that was struck by Russian forces during an attempted evacuation. The statement also noted the deaths of a 9-year-old and an 18-year-old who were both killed running across a damaged bridge in Irpin. Another child was killed on Friday in a car at a checkpoint in Kharkiv, where some of the most aggressive attacks have taken place, the Times reported.

On Saturday, the United Nations reported that 579 people in total were killed in Russian attacks between Feb. 24 and March 11, including 42 children, though U.N.’s human rights body noted that it believed “that the actual figures are considerably higher.”

In an address on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 79 Ukrainian children had been killed in the attack.

“Now when the war is going on and thousands of people have died in it! And 79 children have died in it. 79 children!” Zelensky said. 

“Do you feel why we are different from them?” he asked. “We live. And they kill. We are 79 lives. And they are 79 deaths.”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened an investigation into potential war crimes carried out by Russian President Vladimir Putin and others, an effort the U.S. has said it supports. 

Some 45 countries are cooperating through the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to document Russia’s actions in a report that will be provided to the ICC.