At a conference on the International Children’s Day, president Volodymyr Zelensky read excerpts from the diary of 8-year-old boy Yehor from Mariupol. The boy described the horrors that he and his family had to endure due to the Russian invasion.

At the beginning, the president stressed that at least 483 Ukrainian children have been killed since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion.

‘Russia has killed – and I will use exactly this wording – Russia has killed at least 483 children. It killed This is not what can be called ‘they became victims of Russian aggression’ or ‘they died as a result of an armed conflict’. No! Russia killed these children. Russia wounded nearly a thousand more children. And it cannot be said that ‘they were injured as a result of hostilities’, president Zelensky said.

He cited the diary s of Yehor, who lived in Mariupol before the start of the big war, and later stayed in the besieged city. Zelensky called the diary the evidence that the events of the Second World War did not protect the world from new war crimes committed by the Russian Federation.

President Zelensky emphasized that now Ukraine is fighting for all children, future generations, their rights and freedoms.

‘We will do everything so that every Ukrainian child can return home to Ukraine. Return to a normal life where there will be no war’, he concluded.