During the full-scale invasion, 75 Ukrainian children have been tortured by Russians, 69 of them in the village of Yahidne, Chernihiv Region.
This was stated in an interview with Interfax Ukraine by Yulia Usenko, head of the Department for the Protection of Children's Interests and Combating Violence of the Prosecutor’s General Office of Ukraine.
According to her, pre-trial investigation services and prosecutors document crimes against children in more than 3,200 criminal proceedings. These include murder, mutilation, abduction of children, forced displacement, deportation, sexual violence against children, and attacks on children's institutions and facilities. According to Yulia Usenko, abductions are often accompanied by torture and illegal deprivation of liberty.
Totally, 75 Ukrainian children were tortured. The vast majority of them (69) were in the village of Yahidne, Chernihiv Region.
"The conditions in which the children were kept together with adults in the basement of the school, the way they were treated, are equivalent to torture," Usenko said.
In addition, according to the head of the department, there were isolated cases in Kherson and Kharkiv regions when children were deprived of their liberty and tortured together with adults. According to the occupiers, children were mostly tortured because they allegedly passed information about the movement of Russian troops and equipment to the Armed Forces. Reports of torture were most often received after the liberation of the territories.
Yulia Usenko said that 13 cases of sexual violence against children have been recorded so far. Most of them were established after the de-occupation.
On 24 June, Russian snipers killed Ukrainian teenagers Tigran Ohannisyan and Mykyta Khanganov in occupied Berdiansk. The occupiers accused the boys of preparing a sabotage on the railroad and persecuted them for six months. Last autumn, Tigran was abducted from his home and tortured for five days. He was released only after his parents publicised the child's disappearance.