You're reading: UNICEF has no proof of child soldiers in Ukraine

International organizations and monitors said they do not have proof of children fighting as soldiers in the eastern war zone, despite numerous anecdotal stories about under-aged fighters.

“UNICEF
has received anecdotal evidence that children and adolescents have been
recruited and may be directly involved in the fighting in Donetsk and
Luhansk oblasts … As of today we have not received confirmation nor a clear
denial based on evidence. Recruiting and using children under the age of
15 as soldiers is prohibited under international humanitarian law and is
defined as a war crime by the International Criminal Court,” Giovanna Barberis, the UNICEF
Representative in Ukraine, told the Kyiv Post on Jan. 29.

Parties to conflicts should ensure that members of their armed forces
who are not yet 18 years old do not take direct part in hostilities.

“Armed groups should not, under any circumstances, recruit or
use in hostilities people under the age of 18 years. Child
soldiers are victims, whose participation in conflict bears serious
implications for their physical and emotional well-being. They are commonly
subject to abuse and most of them witness death, killing, and sexual violence.
Many are forced to perpetrate these atrocities and some suffer serious long-term
psychological consequences,” Barberis said.

Over last months there were plenty of messages in reports of Russian and
Ukrainian media, and in social networks, claiming that 15-17-year-old teenagers participate on both sides of the military conflict.

Last November, Russian state TV Rossiya 1 showed a report about two minors serving as soldiers alongside separatists in Donetsk. They do not fight on the front line
but help separatists in the rear, the video says. One of them, a schoolboy
Andriy has a nickname “Stark” – the name of his favorite superhero from an “Iron Man” movie. The pro-Kremlin Vostok Battalion’s commander admits that if they had more boys like these they
wouldn’t be afraid of enemies.

Another adolescent,
also Andriy, who goes by nickname Royce, in an interview broadcast on Finnish YLE
television
said he was 15. He is too young for combat missions, but he
trains new volunteers. On
the video Andriy is accompanied by two young men wearing balaclavas, one of
whom claimed to be 17. 

The pictures of young fighters
from time to time appear on the pages of
Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic in social networks. They accompanied by
“heroic” stories of their “combats”. 

For example, in October, in public groups of Novorossia, a
self-declared amalgamation of territory that is seeking independence
from Kyiv, was published a photo and
story of 16-year-old female separatist Valeria Lyahova from Lysychansk with a
call sign “krasotka” (pretty woman), who reportedly “died heroically under the
tank,” attacking the enemy with three F-1 grenades. Later internet users discovered
that the real name of girl was Polina Turchina that she is alive and living in Kaliningrad, Russia. 

Meanwhile UNICEF
reports that
the violent conflict and indiscriminate attacks have endangered the lives of
1.7 million children in Ukraine. More than 1,000 children are forced to seek
refuge in underground bomb shelters in Donetsk alone. Families with
children, mostly mothers and grandmothers, spend the nights and most days inside bomb shelters with little or no access to water,
hygiene, sanitation or food, afraid to go out because of the constant possibility
of being hit by random shelling.

“Violence in
eastern Ukraine continues to escalate daily with multiple civilian casualties,
including children. UNICEF calls on the international community to provide
funds to enable urgent upscaling of the humanitarian response. UNICEF needs $32.45 million to
scale up its humanitarian response to address the urgent needs of 600,000
children and their families in Ukraine,” said Barberis.

According to the United Nations, more than 5,000 people have been killed and more than 1 million displaced since the Kremlin-backed separatists started the war in April.