The deafening silence surrounding the more than 700 children killed by Russia in Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is leaving a trail of crimes perpetrated by Moscow's military forces.

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Many of these Russian crimes have children as victims. Today is the International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression. This Thursday, the Commissioner of the Parliament of Ukraine for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, stated: "Since 2022, official data shows 707 children killed, 2,548 injured, and 2,318 reported missing. Thousands have been deported or forcibly transferred to the Russian Federation. These are documented crimes requiring justice and accountability. Our children deserve to live in safety and to have a childhood free from fear and war. We remember every child who was killed and every innocent victim of this war."

In May, the Ukrainian government reported that 20,570 cases of Ukrainian children deported or forcibly displaced to Russia have been registered. Currently, 1.6 million Ukrainian children remain under Russian control in areas of Ukraine occupied by the invaders. A month ago, Russia proposed including some of these children in prisoner-of-war exchanges, something the Ukrainian government rejected, arguing that it would legitimize their abduction by the invaders. They are abducted children, not prisoners of war.

June 4 is the International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression. It honours kids affected by war and violence. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, at least 707 Ukrainian children have been killed. Behind every number is a child whose future has been… pic.twitter.com/eUEzgOSvEN

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 4, 2026

In this video from the Ukrainian media outlet United24, you can see some of the more than 700 children killed by the Russian invaders. They are a very small fraction of the children whose lives have been shattered by this invasion ordered by Vladimir Putin in February 2022. Images of some of them appear at the top of this article, so that no one forgets that we are not talking about mere numbers in a statistic. If anyone wants to know more details about the children killed by the invaders and see their faces, the website childrenofwar.gov.ua has been collecting detailed information about these children.

The data I mentioned above was released this morning. Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed these children at 9:13 AM CET and again at 2:31 PM, after participating in a moving tribute to these children. The vast majority of foreign media outlets in Spanish and English have decided that this is not news. A Google search reveals that virtually the only media outlets that have covered this are Ukrainian.

In many cases, these are the same media outlets that helped spread Hamas terrorists' lies without any verification, often concealing from their audiences the origin of these falsehoods, created to justify the antisemitic massacre perpetrated by this Islamist criminal gang on October 7, 2023. When a democratic country like Ukraine denounces the murder of more than 700 children, offering detailed figures and complete data on the children killed, wounded, and missing, these media outlets look the other way.