NEW YORK, 12 April 2022, (TON): UN children’s agency said “nearly two-thirds of all Ukrainian children have fled their homes in the six weeks since Russia’s invasion, and the United Nations has verified the deaths of 142 youngsters, though the number is almost certainly much higher.”

Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s emergency programs director who just returned from Ukraine, said having 4.8 million of Ukraine’s 7.5 million children displaced in such a short time is quite incredible.

He said “it is something he hadn’t before seen happen so quickly in 31 years of humanitarian work.”

He told the UN Security Council “they have been forced to leave everything behind — their homes, their schools and, often, their family members.”

“I have heard stories of the desperate steps parents are taking to get their children to safety, and children saddened that they are unable to get back to school.”

Ukraine’s UN ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, claimed Russia has taken more than 121,000 children out of Ukraine and reportedly drafted a bill to simplify and accelerate adoption procedures for orphans and even those who have parents and other relatives.

He said “most of the children were removed from the besieged southern port city of Mariupol and taken to eastern Donetsk and then to the Russian city of Taganrog.”