“War. I slept well, woke up and smiled.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine learn these opening phrases from “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank at a conference focusing on children on Wednesday afternoon as he sought to focus on the toll that Russia’s invasion of his nation has taken on its youngest residents: In 15 months of battle, he stated, a minimum of 483 kids had been killed, and different estimates counsel that the toll is even greater.

“When there are air-raid sirens every night, and just sleeping is happiness, it is valuable,” he stated. “When there are missile attacks every night and waking up in the morning is truly priceless.”

Hours after he spoke, a 9-year-old lady and her 34-year-old mom have been woken within the predawn hours by the wail of an air-raid alarm in Kyiv, the police stated. The two raced to what they thought can be the protection of a bomb shelter at a kids’s hospital within the metropolis, however, in response to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, they died simply outdoors the door.

Russian ballistic missiles had been flying towards the town at round 5 occasions the pace of sound as the 2 stood outdoors the hospital constructing, the police stated. Just minutes after the alarm sounded, in response to the mayor, one of many missiles was struck by a Ukrainian interceptor missile within the skies above, and the kid and her mom have been killed by the fiery particles. As daybreak broke, the kid’s grandmother arrived to establish the our bodies.

The lady’s dying, within the early hours of International Children’s Day in Ukraine, served as a reminder that probably the most harmless are amongst these paying a excessive value within the battle. It additionally sparked renewed outrage throughout Ukraine.

A 33-year-old lady was additionally killed by falling particles close by, in response to the police, and a minimum of 16 folks have been injured, the mayor stated.

In his remarks, Mr. Zelensky had made an emotional enchantment, saying the killing of youngsters shouldn’t develop into normalized.

“Russia killed — and this is why I will use such wording — Russia killed 483 children at least,” he stated. “It killed them. This is not something that can be called ‘they were victims of Russian aggression’ or ‘they died as a result of the armed conflict.’ No, Russia killed these children. Russia maimed almost 1,000 more children.”

Mr. Zelensky’s choice to cite from Anne Frank’s diary was notably poignant as a result of he’s Ukraine’s first Jewish president. Ms. Frank was an adolescent when she hid from the Nazis for greater than two years throughout the World War II-era occupation of the Netherlands and stored a diary that went on to develop into a global greatest vendor.

But his quote from her diary additionally served as a tacit rebuke of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has used the spurious argument that Russia is combating Nazis in Ukraine to justify his full-scale invasion.

The Ukrainian president additionally learn from the diary of another child caught within the maelstrom of battle: Yehor, a 9-year-old boy from the town of Mariupol in southern Ukraine.

“I have a wound on my back, the skin is torn off,” the kid wrote whereas the town was underneath siege by Russian forces final yr, as Mr. Zelensky relayed. “My sister has a head wound. My mom has flesh torn out of her arm and a wound on her leg.”

“My grandmother, Galya, two dogs, and my favorite city of Mariupol died,” the boy wrote, in response to Mr. Zelensky.

The Ukrainian chief stated that his nation was combating for the rights of all kids in order that “there will never again be new diaries by Anne Frank and Yehor from Mariupol.”

“Where it is safe,” he stated. “Where it is free.”