More than 600 Ukrainian Children Have Died in the War

The Office of the Prosecutor General reported on Monday that the number of Ukrainian children killed since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion has now passed the 600 mark, standing at 604.

On Friday, the United Nations Human Rights office put the number a bit higher, at 669, decrying “large-scale human rights violations and incredible suffering to millions of children.”

The number of children who have been injured and psychologically scarred is far higher, the prosecutor’s office stressed in a statement.

“More than 2,421 children have suffered in Ukraine as a result of Russia’s full-scale armed aggression. As of the morning of March 24, 2025, according to official information from juvenile prosecutors, 604 children were killed and more than 1,817 were injured of varying severity,” the statement said.

The largest number of victims was recorded in the Donetsk region (633 children), followed by Kharkiv (470), Dnipro (203), and Kherson (202).

Ukrinform reported that the following children were killed or injured over the past week:

• On March 20, three 17-year-old boys were injured in a drone attack in Odesa.
• On March 21, a 17-year-old girl died and a 10-month-old girl was injured in a drone attack in Zaporizhzhia.
• On March 22, a 17-year-old girl and a boy were injured in the village of Maryine, Sumy region, as a result of drone attacks.
• On March 23, a 5-year-old girl died in Kyiv as a result of a Russian drone attack.

“The hostilities and occupation of part of the territory of Ukraine by the Russian Federation have led to large-scale human rights violations and caused incredible suffering to millions of children. Their rights have been violated in all aspects of life, leaving deep scars, both physical and psychosocial,” Volker Türk, the head of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on Friday.

Between 24 February 2022 and 31 December 2024, the UN Human Rights Office confirmed, 669 children were killed and 1,833 injured, many of them as a result of the widespread use of explosive weapons in populated areas. Of these, 521 children were killed and 1,529 were injured in territory controlled by Ukraine, 148 were killed and 304 were injured in currently occupied territory. The real figures are likely much higher.

During the reporting period, at least 1,614 attacks destroyed or damaged schools, Ukrinform noted.

Children in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine are particularly vulnerable, the report says. The UN Human Rights Office also confirmed that during the first year after the full-scale invasion, at least 200 children, many of whom were in residential institutions, were transferred to the occupied territory or the Russian Federation – actions that likely constitute war crimes under International Humanitarian Law also called the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC).

Editor’s note: In accordance with the US Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), all combat military personnel must attend a mandatory LOAC refresher course every six months to ensure their awareness of international humanitarian law and act as a final check against committing war crimes.