The forgotten children in the forgotten war
This is Europe’s forgotten war, a conflict that has claimed more than 13,000 lives, almost one-third of them civilians, during the past four years, making it the bloodiest in Europe since the Balkans in the 1990s and one of the longest-running in almost a century.
Putins again ignores the international law and the total lack of respect for children's lives is a war crime
In Eastern Ukraine, children still go to school and play, but the intrusion of violence into their everyday lives has made them the vulnerable victims of a war that's about to enter its fifth year.
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This is Europe’s forgotten war were the children are also forgotten, a conflict that has claimed more than 13,000 lives, almost one-third of them civilians, during the past four years, making it the bloodiest in Europe since the Balkans in the 1990s and one of the longest-running in almost a century. Western powers blame Russian president Vladimir Putin for starting the conflict by illegally annexing Crimea in 2014 — the first appropriation of European territory since the second world war — providing the catalyst for Russian-backed separatists to seize the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Lugansk.
But the war in east Ukraine has already killed 13,000 people and injured 30,000, the UN said on 21 January.
It has lasted as long as World War One and shows little sign of going away.