MOSCOW (Sputnik) – More than 200 children have died in the course of the conflict in southeastern Ukraine, while 100,000 have not attended school for one year, hiding in basements, Russia's Children's Right Commissioner Pavel Astakhov has told the Rossiya 1 TV channel.
"According to estimates from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), over 2 million children have suffered as a result of this [Ukrainian] civil war, there are more than 200 killed children among them," Astakhov said, stressing that 15 children were killed in Ukraine this year, after a ceasefire was enforced in the country.
The commissioner added that, as a result of the fighting, over 490 schools were destroyed in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) in southeastern Ukraine, along with 78 hospitals.
"A hundred thousand children did not go to school for one year…but lived in basements. The current question is where these children are going to go on September 1," Astakhov said.
