February 24, 2026 — Four Years Since Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine
Four years ago today, the world woke up to the sound of explosions over Kyiv. Four years ago, millions of children woke up to russia’s full scale invasion.
Today, a four-year-old child in Ukraine has never known a morning without the possibility of sirens. A twelve-year-old in Kamloops, Winnipeg, or Toronto has grown up straddling two worlds, one of relative safety, one of unimaginable loss. And somewhere, in a village that no longer has a school or a clinic, a girl named Alina stands next to her shrapnel-scarred house and tells her story to anyone still willing to listen.
The question we must ask ourselves, all of us, wherever we stand, is this: What are we teaching the children?
The Children of Ukraine: Four-Year-Olds Who Have Only Known War
Numbers can numb us, but they must be spoken. According to a UNICEF article from 2025, more than 2,520 Ukrainian children have been killed or injured since February 2022, and that figure accounts only for verified casualties. The true number is almost certainly far higher. Child casualties in 2024 rose by more than 50 per cent compared to 2023. Over 1,600 education facilities and nearly 790 health facilities have been damaged or destroyed (UNICEF, 2025).
One in five children in Ukraine has lost a close relative or friend. Nearly one third of teenagers report feeling so sad or hopeless that they stopped doing the things they loved. The average child in Ukraine has lost two years of reading development and one year of mathematics — not because they are less capable, but because they have been spending those hours in basements, sheltering from the bombs that adults chose to drop on them.
The children themselves told us what this feels like long before the statisticians confirmed it. In 2022, through a remarkable digital project called Mom, I See War, Ukrainian children documented their lives in drawings and words. Six-year-old Ivan from Kyiv wrote: “Mom, we will have our home, we will be able to return there. I do not want there to be only its remains. When I grow up, truly none of the war will ever be. I want sunshine, and I want to go home. I miss my teddy bear and friends.” Nine-year-old Polinka, drawing through sirens and explosions, wrote: “I will never have dreams of war again.” Eight-year-old Julia from Kherson, already displaced, drew the weeping earth and wrote simply: “The earth is crying” (Kantawala, 2022).
These are not political statements. These are children. And they are watching us.
The Children of the Diaspora: Growing Up Between Two Worlds
My God-sister Іванка Димид recently posted a question that stopped me in my tracks: Які вони? What are they like? The children born during the Moscow massacre in Ukraine?
She answered her own question with remarkable clarity. She is watching her niece Ada, daughter of the heroic Klymentia Dymyd, growing up in the shadow of this war. She is watching young Emilia Dymyd, Ada’s aunt, who is not fundraising for her dream vacation, but for the March Workshop of the Crane (Березнева Майстерня Журавля). For drones. Because that is what it means to travel on the wings of the Crane and the Wren right now, not a flight of leisure, but a flight of survival.
“Let this be the widow’s mite,” Іванка writes. “The Lord will count every cent. He will wipe every tear.”
Diaspora children are watching this too. They are watching their parents organize gatherings every Saturday. They are watching their aunts fundraise for drones instead of holidays. They are watching their grandmothers learn to live with uncertainty, and their fathers carry the exhaustion of solidarity that has no finish line. They are learning what it means to love a country from afar, that it is not a romantic thing, but a weight you carry gladly because the alternative is to put it down and walk away.
What we are teaching the children of the diaspora, if we are doing our work well, is this: identity is not a passive inheritance. It is an active choice made every single day.
To Those Who Stand with Ukraine: Your Witness Matters More Than You Know
In Paris, a Ukrainian woman named Olga, separated from her family by thousands of kilometres, writes that she feels empty. She cannot find the Christmas spirit in her shop. Her heart is in Kyiv, where her sister Sasha is living through power cuts, no heating, no water. And yet Sasha writes back about the Nobel Peace Prize, about Dvorak symphonies, about children conceived since the war started: “It makes me happy to know that people made love” (Mignot, 2022).
This is what human resilience looks like. And it survives, in large part, because people like you are still paying attention.
To everyone who has attended a gathering, donated a cent, signed a petition, shared a post, written a postcard, or simply refused to look away, the children are watching you too. You are teaching them that solidarity is real. That the world is not entirely indifferent. That adults can, sometimes, choose the harder and more honourable path.
Do not underestimate what it means for a child in Kamloops to see strangers holding Ukrainian flags on a Saturday afternoon. Do not underestimate what it means for a child in Kyiv to know that someone in Canada lit a candle for them this week. In a war designed partly to make Ukraine feel alone, every act of witness is a profound counter-argument.
To Those Who Still Support Russia’s Invasion: Look at the Children
There is no gentle way to write this section, so I will simply be direct.
If you support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or justify it, or explain it away, I want you to sit with what is documented in the sources I have cited here. Not propaganda. UNICEF. Peer-reviewed academic journals. The drawings of children aged five to fifteen who lived through bombardment.
Look at Bozhena, ten years old from Vyshhorod, who survived childhood cancer only to be forced to flee her home, leaving her father behind to defend it.
Look at Nika, twelve, from Kyiv, who drew a girl standing at the border of Ukraine and Europe, weeping because her house in Kherson was destroyed and she is leaving her homeland forever.
Look at Alisa, five years old, from Lubny.
Look at what has been done to children in territories under Russian occupation, the documentation of deportations, the erasure of language and identity, the severing of children from their families and their heritage. These are not allegations; they are the basis for an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.
The message being sent to these children by those who continue to justify this war is: your life, your language, your land, your future, none of it matters enough.
That is a message we should be ashamed to send to any child, anywhere.
What Message Shall We Send Instead?
On this fourth anniversary, I think of Polinka, who kept drawing through the sirens. Of Ivan, who misses his teddy bear. Of young Ada, whose aunt is fundraising for drones so that Ada can live her childhood on God-given land in peace. Of every child sitting in a basement right now, somewhere in Ukraine, waiting for the all-clear.
The message we owe them is not complicated, but it requires courage:
We see you. We will not forget you. We will not stop. And when this is over, because it will be over, the world you rebuild will be worth everything you have endured.
The children of Ukraine are not only victims. They are, as Іванка writes, завзяті, рішучі і прекрасні, determined, resolute, and beautiful. They are teaching us something too: that it is possible to draw pictures of peace while bombs fall outside your window. That the earth crying and the earth healing are not opposites. That even in the darkest years, children dream of going home.
The least we can do is make sure there is a home to go back to.
Слава Україні. Героям слава.
References
Kantawala, A. (2022). As they saw it: Ukrainian children witnessing the horrors of war. Art Education, 75(5), 4–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2022.2070401
Mignot, E. (2022, December 27). ‘Children have been conceived since the war started. It makes me happy to know that people made love’: The diary of two sisters separated by the war in Ukraine. Le Monde. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/m-le-mag/article/2022/12/27/children-have-been-conceived-since-the-war-started-it-makes-me-happy-to-know-that-people-made-love-the-diary-of-two-sisters-separated-by-the-war-in-ukraine_6009293_117.html
UNICEF. (2025, February 21). One in five children in Ukraine has lost a relative or friend since the escalation of war three years ago. https://www.unicef.org/ukraine/en/press-release/3-year-mark-of-war
Mom, I See War [Digital project]. (2022). https://momiseewar.com
What happens to a child in russian occupied territory: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DU89nbsgq3w/
Ivanka Dymyd Post Photo https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=2926549704205585&set=pcb.2926555347538354
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