War leaves behind not only the ruins of cities, but also objects that can kill decades after hostilities end. Ukrainian children are already dying or being maimed due to contact with explosive remnants – fragments of ammunition, shells, mines, hand grenades. In many cases, such items end up in the children’s access zone not by accident, but due to the carelessness of adults, lack of control or storage of weapons at home. The problem is compounded by the fact that children are often not able to identify a dangerous object as a threat – on the contrary, they perceive it as an interesting thing or a game.
How ammunition becomes a trap for Ukrainian children
Ukrainian children are increasingly facing the consequences of war. What was just yesterday a school road or a path to the forest has today turned into a potential place of tragedy. According to the official information According to the Main Department of Mine Action, from the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine until October 1, 2024, 1,041 civilians were injured by mines and explosive objects. 99 of them are children. Almost every tenth case is a child tragedy. And these statistics do not stand still: the news regularly reports on new explosions. A toy that turns out to be an explosive, or an interesting find that instantly turns a game into a tragedy, have long become real stories in Ukrainian towns and villages.
174 thousand square kilometers. That’s all territory in Ukraine is currently classified as potentially dangerous due to mining. This is one third of the entire country. And it is not concentrated only in the war zone. Explosive objects are found in villages where shots have not been heard for a long time, and even in settlements that seemed safe. More than 110 critical infrastructure workers have already become victims of mines, as have dozens of drivers, pensioners, and farmers. But children were the most vulnerable. They don’t have experience, they don’t feel danger like adults. Their curiosity cannot be regulated by rules or warnings. The State Emergency Service has repeatedly called to refrain from visiting fields, forests, forest strips, and areas where hostilities took place. However, the reality remains disheartening: even those who do not violate these recommendations can be injured simply by going for a walk or tending the garden.
Such a terrible situation should not be perceived as a reflection of the past. Because these are not the traces of the war left in the books, but the explosive threat of today. Children’s backpacks next to ditches, game balls next to mangled fields, families no longer returning to their everyday lives – all this becomes part of everyday life. And until every scrap is cleaned, every centimeter checked, no child can be sure that their way to school will not be cut short by a deafening explosion. This is not just a security issue, but a silent war that goes on after the battles against the smallest and least protected.
Children and explosives: recurring tragedies in peaceful courtyards
Three years. That’s how long he lived boy from the village of Komisarivka, Mykolaiv region. His life ended instantly not during shelling, but simply in his own yard. The neighbor, drunk and aggressive after a quarrel with the child’s parents, returned to his house already with a grenade. It exploded immediately, leaving no chance for rescue. The boy died immediately, and the woman died later. The police took more than a hundred cartridges for automatic weapons from her house. This is not the plot of a crime film, but an ordinary Ukrainian village. And this is only one of dozens of cases that add to the terrible statistics every month.
On May 8, an eleven-year-old boy in Kharkiv region came across on an unknown object in the field. The impact, the flash, the scream and the fragments of the explosive instantly turned the child’s curiosity into a fight for life. The boy was hospitalized, doctors are trying to save the child from serious injuries. Another teenager of thirteen years blew up at a mine in the Sumy region on April 7. He was walking with a friend and kicked something incomprehensible. Doctors are still fighting for his life. In January, two 11-year-old boys in Donetsk region found explosives on the outskirts of Dobropill. They were taken to the hospital with leg injuries. In November in the Izyum district of the Kharkiv region suffered two more children – 11 and 12 years old. Both boys suffered severe injuries from an explosion as a result of playing with an unfamiliar object, it was about multiple shrapnel injuries.
Each such story is no longer an exception, today it is part of the wider reality in which Ukrainian children grow up. War leaves behind not only destroyed houses, but also weapons and explosives that can wait underground for years. When a child is around, it turns into risk, pain and potential tragedy.
Bitter experience: the past exploding in children’s hands
Ukrainian fields, forests, streams still hide the danger laid decades earlier. After the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of unexploded mines, shells and bombs remained on the territory of Ukraine. Over time, they were forgotten, but they still find their victims, among whom are children.
Unfortunately, many countries have such a bitter experience.
More than a century has passed since the First World War, but the French land still throws up its fragments. In the Verdun region, there are still bans on construction, agriculture and even walking through the “Red Zone” – areas littered with unexploded ordnance, poison and mines. Children in these areas occasionally come across war debris, and farmers are forced to call in sappers several times a year.
Every year, up to 5,000 aerial bombs from the Second World War are discovered in Germany. Most of them are hiding underground in cities. In 2010, three sappers died near Göttingen during an attempt to defuse such a bomb. Even more alarming cases concern children. In 1994, a boy found a bomb in a forest in Berlin. She exploded when he tried to pick her up.
After the war of the 1990s, the country remained one of the most mined in Europe. At the same time, village children repeatedly became victims of landmines left on roadsides and in fields. In 2004, two boys died in the area of former hostilities while playing near an abandoned house. They found an object that looked like a walkie-talkie, which turned out to be an anti-personnel mine.
In Cambodia, although the war ended a long time ago, its echoes can still be heard. The country is considered one of the most mined in the world. According to experts, there are up to six million mines and shells left here. In many villages, children grow up knowing that playing in the field is a risk, but knowledge does not always save. Every year, dozens of children here lose their limbs or their lives due to found ammunition. In 2015, three schoolchildren found a mine and tried to disassemble it out of curiosity. Two died immediately, the third survived, but was left without an arm.
After decades of military conflict, this country remains one of the most dangerous for children. Minefields are often not marked in any way. According to UNICEF, in the 2020s, hundreds of cases of children dying or being maimed due to accidental contact with explosive objects are recorded every year in Afghanistan. One of the loudest cases was when a group of schoolchildren found a mine in the school yard. They considered it part of the old device.
These stories are different, but the point is the same: war never completely disappears. She burrows into the ground, waits in the ruins, hides among the grass. Children’s hands do not understand that they touch death. And until the last wreckage is found and neutralized, humanity will pay for its wars even generations from now. As a result, we have a terrible reality, when children die or suffer serious injuries, just playing in the yard, looking for a flower in the field, jumping into a ravine. Explosive objects lie in the ground, waiting for their moment, and this moment easily finds a child.
However, officials from the Ministry of Education and Science, instead of urgently introducing annual trainings, interactive lessons, and real mine safety training, play with paper reforms. And in the meantime, teachers, every time they send children on vacation, read to them outdated norms of behavior on the street. It is as if mines, grenades, stretch marks are something exceptional that happens “somewhere far away”, and not just under our feet. Awareness campaigns, if they do appear, quickly disappear into paper reports or pages with three views. Budgets are drawn up, videos are shot, reports are submitted. But the school still hasn’t explained to the children what an anti-personnel mine looks like and what to do if you come across a suspicious object. There are also no mandatory lessons, practical classes and elementary instructions in textbooks.
How many more tragedies must happen before we understand the real weight of the danger? It is worth remembering the simple truth that all these tragedies do not happen because children are careless. They become because adults remain indifferent. It is not at all difficult to teach, to warn, to explain. It is not necessary to allocate billions for this. All that is needed is the will and concern of the state. And while she is gone, children will pay for this inaction with their bodies, blood, and lives. Because someone decided that prevention is unnecessary here, or it can be postponed “for later”. That mortal danger is always nearby, remains almost invisible just under our feet.
What should the state do?
In a country where hostilities are taking place, and a third of them are filled with explosives, like cupcakes with raisins, one cannot limit oneself to general phrases and warnings, such as “don’t touch the suspicious”. This is not an instruction for life, but some kind of post. In conditions where a child can be blown up on the way to school or while walking in the field, every day without action on the part of the state turns into silent complicity in the future tragedy. That is why mine safety should become a part of national policy, as important as defense or health. There should be a centralized program, not on paper, but in reality. With clear funding, deadlines, performers and monthly public reports. Sappers cannot drag out demining for decades, when every day can end in the death of a child.
It is necessary to increase funding for humanitarian demining, mobilize international aid, attract the latest technologies — from drones to AI for analyzing risky areas. There should be more than one video clip on television, but a national mine safety platform with interactive maps, a mobile application and mandatory use in schools, kindergartens and camps.
Mine safety lessons should not be held once a year before the holidays, but every month. And not in the format of boring reading of behavioral notes, but through interactive modules, videos, simulators, exercises and mandatory testing. Moreover, every school in high-risk regions should have a briefing, an evacuation plan, a map of nearby dangerous places and contacts of local pyrotechnicians. Curricula need to be rewritten to take into account the reality in which children may encounter landmines, and not just study the history of wars. History is already living underfoot and now we have to learn to survive.
Parents cannot and should not replace the state, but they have a responsibility to become the first safety instructors for their children. Just as they teach not to cross the road at a red light, they should explain that no “interesting iron” is worth touching. There should be family conversations, watching videos, analyzing the news about the explosions. It is clear that all this is not intended to scare, but so that the child understands the real situation. Every family should have a rule brought to the point of automaticity: if you see something suspicious, don’t touch it, walk away, the adult said. In addition, parents who bring weapons from the battlefield must understand their danger to children.
And so far, all these mines are exploding not only under the feet of our children. They explode in the silence that adults have chosen. In reports that did not become actions. In the silence of the officials, for whom the “mine safety lesson” still remains a tick in the plan, and not a chance to save lives. History constantly warns, but Ukrainian society has not learned its lessons.
