On International Children’s Day in Warsaw, activists gathered to remind the general public that the Russian aggressors chose Ukrainian children as their deliberate targets.
The action “What if children are a target?” held in Castle Square in the center of the Polish capital was organized by activists from the public initiative ʼʼEuromaidan-Warsawʼʼ alongside with Polish activists, Ukrinform reports.
On a day when children in other countries received gifts, the names of the dead were heard in the center of Warsaw: this day became the voice of those who cannot speak for themselves, the activists stressed.
“These children were removed from the occupied territories without the consent of their parents, often under the pretext of ‘evacuation’. They were isolated in boarding schools, ‘re-educated’, had their names changed, Russian citizenship imposed, and contact with their families blocked. This is not just deportation – this is an attempt to erase national identity and turn Ukrainian children into weapons against their own state,” said Emma Zahynaiko, an activist with “Euromaidan-Warsaw”.
According to her, such actions are a direct violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and have been recognized by the UN and the International Criminal Court as a war crime. The activist emphasized that it was for this that the Hague Court issued arrest warrants for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova.
As part of the rally, the activists set up a “playground”, cordoned off with “crime scene” tape. Inside the playground, instead of sand in the sandbox, they put toys drenched in “blood” and a small replica of a Russian missile. Next to the “site”, activists showcased a children’s coffin with soft toys and flowers inside it.
As the activists emphasized, it was a reminder that Ukrainian children are dying in their homes, in their beds, on playgrounds, and in schools.
The participants held up posters with the names, photos and stories of the children, killed by the aggressor, from across Ukraine, including Uman, Kryvyi Rih, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Kramatorsk, Lviv, Zaporizhzhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, and other regions.
“Today, children all over the world are celebrating, and we remember those who are no longer with us. We are losing the future not because we don’t protect it, but because the world doesn’t stop evil. Ukrainian children cannot serve as the price of someone else’s indifference,” Euromaidan-Warsaw activist Nadiia Vyrebska stressed in her speech.
The participants publicly appealed to the international community and governments with demands to bring back all illegally deported children, investigate every fact of murder, abduction, and torture of children, and also to hold the Russian military and political leadership accountable for crimes against the youngest.
The activists also recalled that as of May 2025, at least 630 children had died in Ukraine, about 2,000 were injured, about 20,000 Ukrainian children were illegally deported to Russia, and hundreds of thousands lost their homes, schools, and access to medical care.
As Ukrinform reported earlier, a 45-year-old volunteer from Poland, journalist Krzysztof Gożełak, died in the war with the Russian aggressor.
Photo: Euromaidan-Warsaw
Source: In Warsaw, activists highlight issue of Russia targeting Ukrainian children
