Artem Primenko, 16-year-old Ukrainian sambo champion, was killed along with his family during a Russian air raid on the city of Sumy, the Nexta portal reported on Tuesday evening. As of March 9, 61 children have died and 100 have been injured since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian spokeswoman Lyudmila Denisova said.
Lyudmila Denisova stressed that the fate of 55 children from an orphanage in the city of Vorzel, Kiev region, is unknown. Later, presidential adviser Kirill Timoshenko announced the evacuation of children to a hospital in Kyiv.
“In Mariupol, for the first time in decades, and perhaps for the first time since the Nazi invasion, a six-year-old girl died of dehydration. Rescuers pulled her out from under the rubble of the building,” Denisova wrote on Facebook.
On Tuesday, shelling destroyed seven houses in the town of Malin, Zhytomyr region, killing five people, including two children born last year.
“Such actions of the Russian armed forces pose a direct threat to the life and health of civilians, violate the norms of international humanitarian law and violate the basic rights of children – the right to life and health,” she stressed.
As the Nexta portal reported on Tuesday night, during a Russian air raid on the city of Sumy, 16-year-old Artem Primenko, the champion of Ukraine in sambo martial arts, died along with his family. Among others, Artyom’s two younger brothers were killed during the raid.
Earlier on Tuesday, the head of the Sumy Regional State Administration, Dmitry Zhivetsky, said that Russian planes had dropped bombs on residential areas of the city on the night of Monday to Tuesday, and there were children among the dead and injured.
The Security Service of Ukraine has published a recording of the interrogation of a Russian prisoner of war. He testified that his unit had been ordered to capture Kharkiv in three days and that the soldiers were allowed to kill civilians.
“We had an order to occupy the city, occupy all the main roads and block all civilian exits. We have been given permission to open fire on civilians and on all residents,” the soldier said.
Russian soldiers are behaving like terrorists and cowards, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Tuesday in a speech posted on Twitter.
“Russian soldiers behave like terrorists and cowards. For 11 days, the Russian invaders destroyed more than 200 Ukrainian schools, 34 hospitals, more than 1,500 residential buildings. We already know that 38 Ukrainian children were killed. More than 400 civilians were killed, more than 800 were injured. These data are, of course, incomplete,” Reznikov said.
The Minister of Defense called Russia’s actions “a real act of genocide” against Ukrainians and war crimes, adding that “400,000 people were taken prisoner in Mariupol alone. They are constantly under fire (…) Russian invaders are shelling humanitarian corridors.”