As reported by Relifweb, UNICEF Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia Regina De Dominicis stated that as winter continues to take hold, UNICEF staff is witnessing an escalation of attacks on infrastructure across Ukraine, with particularly unrelenting bombardment in the east and south of the country.
Over the past month, there has been an increase in air attacks across Ukraine with more than 900 air attacks recorded in the space of a week.
According to UNICEF staff, these attacks have caused injuries among children, sent an intensified wave of fear and dread through already deeply distressed communities, and left millions of children across Ukraine without sustained access to electricity, heating, and water, exposing them to additional serious harm as temperatures plummet.
In Ukraine, during the winter months, temperatures regularly go as low as -20°C, with bitter high winds making it feel even colder. Children simply cannot withstand these conditions without energy.Blackouts and power cuts make it extremely challenging for health facilities to provide critical services, another dire situation given the rise in cases of pneumonia, seasonal influenza, and waterborne diseases among children across Ukraine.
Moreover, the lack of electricity affects the entire education system: children and youth cannot attend schools. This is in addition to the problem of the destruction of many infrastructures or the lack of bomb bunkers in several of educational buildings.
For almost two years now, children, adolescents and young people have also been experiencing the repercussions of the war on their education, being forced to attend classes remotely or interrupt their studies.
All these are the so-called reverberating effects of war: the side effects of conflict that affect health, education, infrastructure, and the various aspects of the lives of civilians in wartime.
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