The war in Ukraine has killed 136 children in the 31 days since the start of the Russian invasion, Ukraine's office of the prosecutor general said on Saturday in a message on the Telegram app.
Of the total, 64 children have been killed in the Kyiv region, the office said. A further 50 children have died in the Donetsk region, it said.
Additionally, 199 children have been wounded.
Reuters was not able to immediately verify the report.
About 300 people were killed in the Russian airstrike last week on a Mariupol theatre that was being used as a shelter on Friday.
Meanwhile, in what could signal an important narrowing of Moscow’s war aims, the US said Russian forces appear to have halted, at least for now, their ground offensive aimed at capturing the capital, Kyiv.
Instead, they are concentrating more on gaining control of the Donbas region in the country’s south east — a shift the Kremlin seemed to confirm.
Col-Gen Sergei Rudskoi, deputy chief of the Russian general staff, said the main objective of the first stage of the operation — reducing Ukraine’s fighting capacity — has “generally been accomplished”, allowing Russian forces to focus on “the main goal, liberation of Donbas”.
The seeming shift in Moscow’s stated military objectives — after weeks in which Russian president Vladimir Putin denied Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign country and appeared bent on capturing many of its cities and toppling its government — could point to a possible exit strategy for Russia, which has run into fiercer resistance and suffered heavier losses than anticipated.
In fact, the Russians are no longer in full control of Kherson, the first major city to fall to Moscow’s forces, a senior US defence official said.
The official said the southern city is being contested by the Ukrainians in heavy fighting. The Kremlin denied it had lost full control.
