Ukraine reported that more than 200 children were killed and nearly 390 injured since the beginning of the Russian invasion

The Ukrainian Juvenile Prosecutor's Office reported that 208 children were killed and 387 injured in attacks perpetrated by Russia since the beginning of its invasion of the country, on 24 February, until this Saturday.

The majority of child casualties, including deaths and injuries, occurred in the capital Kiev region with 129, followed by Donetsk with 120, Kharkiv (91), Chernihiv (66), Mikolaiv (40), Kherson (41), Zaporiyia (22), Yitomir (15) and Sumy (16).

The Prosecutor's Office has also reported that 1,500 educational institutions have suffered material damage since the beginning of the invasion, 102 of which have been completely destroyed.

The UN has estimated some 2,500 civilians killed and nearly 3,000 injured since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which details approximately 184 children killed and 286 injured since the beginning of the war.

On the other hand, in the course of the war in Ukraine, 3,640,000 people left the country and more than a million have already returned, Ukrainian Minister of the Interior Denis Monastirski reported Saturday.

“Throughout the war, 3,640,000 people left Ukraine and 1,130,000 returned. Some 31,000 humanitarian aid vehicles were introduced into the country,” he said.

He noted that border guards on the western border practice a simplified regime of entry and exit of citizens with the countries of the European Union and with Moldova.

“As part of the restoration of control of the state border in the regions of Kiev, Chernihiv and Sumy freed from the occupiers, our border guards went to their positions of responsibility,” he added.

The Unian agency reported that in almost two months of war, 85 sabotage and reconnaissance groups were uncovered and 659 people were arrested.

According to figures from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 5.1 million people have left Ukraine since Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the order to start the invasion.

“Russian troops used rape as an instrument of war in Ukraine”: the horror that was exposed after the withdrawal of Putin's soldiers

Iyona Krivulyak, who runs the La Strada-Ukraine national hotline — a group that campaigns against gender-based violence — told CNN that they received nine accounts of rape across the country, most of them gang rape.

“Rape is an instrument of war against civilians, an instrument of destruction of the Ukrainian nation,” he said.

“Women were taken out of the basement so that soldiers could abuse them”

In early April, Ukrainian authorities accused Russian troops present in the country of targeted sexual violence against Ukrainian women and girls, having found several bodies of naked women on the roadside not far from Kiev.

The deputy mayor of Ivankiv, Maryna Beschastna, spoke of an episode in which two Ukrainian sisters aged 15 and 16 were raped by Russian soldiers and could not hold back their tears, the Express newspaper reported.

ITV reporter Dan Rivers said that “Maryna is the deputy mayor here and has heard grim accounts of how Russian soldiers treated women in the area.”

Beschastna added to the British media that “women were taken out of the basement by pulling their hair so that soldiers could abuse them.”

(With information from Europa Press and EFE)

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