Child casualties in Ukraine are surging

By Deborah Castellano Lubov

“We cannot let the world take its eyes off children in Ukraine. We need urgent action to protect them and to bring these grave violations to an end.”

Save the Children’s Country Director in Ukraine, Sonia Khush, made this statement in response to the latest report of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, published on Tuesday, stressing that child casualties are the highest since April 2022.

Save the Children, an international humanitarian organization dedicated to helping children and protecting their rights, has been working in Ukraine since 2014.

While 209 children were killed or injured at that time, new data from the UN child rights organization show 123 child casualties in June 2026, with seven children killed and 116 injured.

Tearing apart the lives of children

Thus, the Save the Children official decried that “The war in Ukraine is tearing apart the lives of children.

“In kindergartens, homes or on the street,” she lamented, “there is no longer a safe place for them.”

Save the Children dramatically scaled up its operations since the full-scale war broke out. Since February 2022, the organization’s team in Ukraine has reached more than 4.7 million people, including more than 1.9 million children, of whom 448,000 have received education support.

‘Increasingly powerful missiles now destroy entire sections of apartment buildings’

Ms. Khush acknowledged that “All of us in Ukraine have felt how much worse things have got recently. Our staff say this is one of the most difficult periods since the full-scale war began over four years ago, with attacks more frequent, more intense and increasingly unpredictable.”

People in Ukraine for years, she explained, have followed the ‘two-wall rule,’ staying in places protected by at least two interior walls to reduce the risk of injury from blast waves or flying debris.

But now, she lamented, increasingly powerful missiles “destroy entire sections of apartment buildings, piercing through houses, and rockets hit underground parking where people used to go for shelter.”