By Olha Chepil | 2025-04-21

KYIV, Ukraine -- In Ukraine, a child's laughter is increasingly rare. Every day, some of the youngest victims of Russia's war are silenced -- killed by missiles, land mines or artillery strikes. More than one million others have fled abroad, their schools abandoned and futures uncertain.

The pain is immediate, but the long-term consequences may be even more devastating. If trends continue, demographers warn, Ukraine could emerge from this war without a next generation.

'The single deadliest strike harming children'

On April 8, mourners in the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih bid farewell to Timofiy Tsvitko, who was three years and nine months old when a Russian missile strike on a children's playground took his life four days earlier. He was already on his way home with his grandmother when the missile hit, killed outside his own building's entryway.

That strike killed nine children and wounded another 12. The youngest victim was a three-month-old baby.

"The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Ukraine, which verified many of the casualties, reported this was the single deadliest strike harming children since February 2022," United Nations (UN) Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher said at a Security Council meeting on April 8.

Olha Pilishchuk, who leads the monitoring team at Memorial, a website devoted to preserving the memory of victims of the war, works with colleagues to collect stories of killed children.

"I think we have the largest single database of the dead -- service members, civilians and children. Our job is to tell what the child liked to do, what they dreamed about, what their favorite toys were," Pilishchuk told Kontur.

A life unlived

Memorial, documenting Russia's war crimes, has published stories of 338 children killed in the war, just a fraction of the total. More stories are in the works.

"The subject of children is probably the most difficult one we work with, because it's about lives that were never fully lived. We publish all stories with the consent of relatives. We offer parents a [written] questionnaire, because not all of them are ready to talk," said Pilishchuk.

Over more than three years of full-scale war, Russian forces have killed at least 605 children in Ukraine, according to figures released by the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office (PGO) on March 25. Another 1,839 have been injured. These figures do not include casualties in occupied territories like Mariupol, meaning the actual toll is likely higher.

The most child casualties occurred in Donetsk (634) and Kharkiv (470) provinces, said the PGO. Those are areas that have seen some of the war's most intense and prolonged fighting, where children are often among the wounded or maimed.

"Our goal is to make sure these losses don't become just statistics. Our journalists have done incredibly important work -- traveling to front-line regions and piecing these stories together bit by bit," said Pilishchuk.

Many injured children in Ukraine are learning how to rebuild their lives. Thirteen-year-old Yana Stepanenko lost both legs in a missile strike at the Kramatorsk railway station in April 2022. After receiving prosthetics, she began running marathons to support other children like her.

"I want children who also lost their legs to see what I'm doing and say to themselves: 'Yes! I can run too!'" the Lviv City Council website quoted Stepanenko as saying in September 2023.

Migrating children

Another tragedy unfolding in Ukraine involves children forced to flee abroad. Since the start of the full-scale war, about 1.4 million school-age children have left the country temporarily, according to a March 25 Facebook post by the commissioner for human rights of the Ukrainian parliament.

"The full-scale invasion has deepened the demographic crisis that had been unfolding in Ukraine for some time. If current trends continue, the country will find itself in a state of irreversible demographic catastrophe," said Svitlana Aksenova, chief researcher at the Institute of Demography and Quality of Life Problems of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences.

Every family needs to have at least two children to sustain Ukraine's population, she said.

"One child replaces the father; one child replaces the mother. And we usually say there should be 22 births per 10 women. If there are too few children, it poses a demographic threat to the country's very existence," Aksenova told Kontur.

Lowest birth rate

Ukraine now has the lowest birth rate in Europe, a sharp decline from 2014, when it was close to the regional average, said Aksenova.

Many families are delaying pregnancy because of safety concerns. Since the full-scale Russian invasion began in February 2022, almost half of all births have taken place in areas under constant shelling, according to the UN.

"Who will fill the kindergartens, schools and later universities, if there are no children? And what should we do with those who work there? One thing truly leads to another -- it's all a chain," said Aksenova.

Stabilizing the population will take time, but the return of women and children could help boost demographic growth, she said.

"After the war, the births that had long been postponed will finally happen," said Aksenova.