In a country where children die every day, a baby dies of hunger: the mother will stand trial
During the war, some parents hide their children in damp basements, flee with them from shelling to foreign countries, hold them in their arms on evacuation platforms, pray in the dark of night. Others carry small coffins. In such realities, the crimes of parents against their own children take on a particularly painful dimension. Not as a social problem. And as a human catastrophe, which occurs in spite of the common pain of the country. While some families lose their children forever, others leave their babies on the verge of survival, throw them in the trash or abuse them. Sometimes they are literally not allowed to eat.
In one of the villages of the Khmelnytsky region, a 6-month-old baby was hospitalized in intensive care in a critical condition – with a weight that is more than two times lower than the age norm. The child, who should have just started getting to know the world, turned out to be in a state of nutritional exhaustion, incompatible with life without urgent medical intervention.
About this case reported police of Khmelnytskyi region. According to her, this fact was discovered during a planned visit to the family of juvenile police officers and representatives of social services. As part of routine preventive control, they appeared in a house where a 24-year-old woman lived with her son. On the spot, they were met by circumstances that the law enforcement officers could not describe otherwise as critical.
Medics worked together with the police. The family doctor recorded that the child has an extremely low weight — on average 2.5 times less than the norm for this age. According to experts, this state of the baby’s body could not have developed suddenly. It is the result of long-term and systematic neglect. It is not only a lack of food, but also a general lack of care, interest, and responsibility for the life of one’s own child.
The child was urgently hospitalized in the intensive care unit of the hospital. Her further condition is currently not reported – in such cases, doctors make predictions with caution. As for the mother, criminal proceedings have been opened under Article 166 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine: “Malicious failure to fulfill the duties of caring for the child, which caused serious consequences.” The maximum punishment under this article is up to 5 years of imprisonment.
The investigation in the case has been completed. The indictment was submitted to the court. The focus of the trial is not only the question of legal responsibility, but also whether the inaction that almost killed the baby can be considered intentional. In parallel with these services, the issue of further custody of the child is resolved – usually in such cases, the child is temporarily removed from the family.
It should be noted that this is not an isolated case. In June 2023, for example, in the Kyiv region, a grandmother beat her newborn grandson to death with a chair. In other regions, abandoned babies, unattended children, exhausted by hunger, with physical injuries are found. In times of war, the state’s child protection system is on the back burner, but it doesn’t always make it in time — even when families are registered, even when doctors pay attention to symptoms. Children’s neglect during the war is always an echo of indifference, poverty, mental disorders, and sometimes — a cold conscious rejection of the parental role.
What happened in Khmelnytskyi region is an alarming signal. Not only about a specific family, but also about the morality and elementary humanity of parents, lack of social support, unbalanced aid mechanisms, which do not always keep up with the scale of a real disaster.
In a country where children are killed by rockets every day, a baby can die in silence – in its own crib, from hunger. And this is also war. But the war for humanity is within the country.
