Ukraine: children, collateral victims of war

In eastern Ukraine, the war left its traces in the landscape, but also important sequelae in children.

UNICEF estimates that 1.7 million children are affected by war each side of the conflict, they lack shelter, food, or medicine.

Chermalyk is a village under the control of the army, near the front line, northeast of the port of Mariupol.

Here, the favorite game of children, this is war. They are fighting with wooden sticks, but the scenario is inspired by the fact that they can hear stories.

Tolik is only eleven years old, but has already seen war up close, too close, "The bullets pierced my clothes on my shoulder here and are passed through. I was born under a lucky star. "

Although some have been injured, the children say they want s' join the army to protect their motherland.

They used to play in the shell craters.

In another village a few kilometers, almost all the houses were destroyed, forcing residents in shelters. This is the case of Tatyana, who lives here with her three year old daughter: "She's three. She knows what a tank. This is not normal. Children already have psychological problems at this age. What's going to happen next? It is said that children of the 1990s are unbearable, but what will happen to these children? They will grow in the ruins. There are no kindergartens, schools, nothing, "she says.

A few miles away, the rebel side, this home welcomes orphans and abandoned children.

Many of them have been abandoned twice, first by their natural parents and their foster families, when the Ukrainian government stopped paying their wages in the territories controlled by separatists.

Children have the same games that deal, except that here, the bad guys, it was the Ukrainians.

The designs of these children reflect their experiences. They draw tanks, something unthinkable before the conflict.

Some even have trouble remembering the period before the war. They feel no pity for the Ukrainian soldiers killed: "No, not for Ukrainians. I understand that they are also human beings, but they kill people. My grandfather told me "says Yulya.

This speech inspired by the belligerent and Manichean language Russian television, as highlighted Yelena Nikulenko, the institution's director, "These children receive information from a single edge. They see that the army is shooting at us and their fathers and brothers to take up arms to defend us. Children listen to adult conversations. On one side there are the Ukrops, as some call them, and the other fathers are terrorists and insurgents, so the children call themselves 'terrorists' them. "