Instead Of Cutting Cake On Her Birthday, A 4-Year-Old Ukrainian Girl Became A War Refugee

At just four years old, Daria is still too young to understand what is happening around her or why she and her family are leaving their home on her birthday.

The family of four from Irpin are among the last to leave the flashpoint town on Kyiv's northwestern outskirts, after intense fighting on Thursday made it impossible to stay.

"We were planning some candles and a cake, but we had to leave it there," her mother Susanna Sopelnikova, told AFP.

AFP/ Representational Image

Her six-year-old brother Yehor sits silently next to their father Anatolii as they wait for the yellow evacuation bus to leave while shelling booms in the background.

"We stayed in the basement for about three weeks, then we decided to leave," Sopelnikova said.

"A bomb hit my house, windows and doors were blown away. But our kids are alive, we are alive. The children are doing well, as if nothing was happening."

Millions of kids forced out of homes

Daria and Yehor are among the millions of Ukrainian children who have been forced out of their homes in the past one month.

According to the UN, about 10 million Ukrainians -- a quarter of its population -- have fled their homes and are now displaced in the country or among the 3.6 million refugees. The US said 12 million need aid and 5.6 million children are unable to go to school.

AP

A month since Russia invaded Ukraine, 4.3 million children ¨C more than half of the country's estimated 7.5 million child population ¨C have been displaced, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday.

¡°The war has caused one of the fastest large-scale displacements of children since World War Two,¡± said UNICEF chief Catherine Russell.

This includes more than 1.8 million who have crossed into neighbouring countries as refugees and 2.5 million who are now internally displaced.

AFP

According to UN human rights office, OHCHR, 78 children have been killed, and 105 have been injured in Ukraine since the war began on 24 February.

But these figures represent only those casualties that the UN has been able to confirm ¨C with the true toll likely far higher.

Over the last four weeks, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has reported 52 attacks that have impacted health care facilities across the country and Ukraine's Education and Science Ministry has reported damage to more than 500 educational facilities.

Reuters

¡°Essential infrastructure on which children depend, including hospitals, schools and buildings sheltering civilians, must never come under attack,¡± the top UNICEF official declared.

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