Dangerous Games: Children In Ukraine Play At War
- By RFE/RL
Photos taken amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine capture boys mimicking adult fighters with fake weapons, checkpoints, and artillery.
1
Maksym and Andriy, both aged 11, salute passing Ukrainian soldiers at their "checkpoint" on a highway in the Kharkiv region on July 20.
2
Maksym and Andriy retire to a fallback position at their play checkpoint on July 20. Hidden secondary firing positions are standard at the real checkpoints on Ukraine's highways.
3
A boy carries a toy gun through a market in Kostyantynivka, in Ukraine's Donetsk region, on June 25.
4
Oleksandr Romanenko, 13, plays with a toy gun he made out of the packaging from aid donations. The boy was photographed in a subway carriage serving as a makeshift bomb shelter in the eastern city of Kharkiv on April 28.
5
A boy with a toy rifle stands next to Ukrainian fighters in central Kyiv on June 22.
6
Two boys pretending to be territorial-defense fighters patrol the village of Stoyanka on May 19. The village is west of Kyiv and was on the front line of the stalled Russian attempt to capture the Ukrainian capital.
7
Maksym and Andriy play with a homemade "howitzer" on a highway in the Kharkiv region on July 20.
8
Seven-year-old Yehor holds a homemade toy rifle equipped with a "sight" made from a plastic bottle cap near Chernihiv on April 17. In the background is the wreckage of destroyed Russian military vehicles.
9
A boy wielding a toy shotgun kneels with his mother during a funeral for a Ukrainian soldier in the Kyiv region on July 17.
10
Valentyn, 6, is equipped with a helmet, toy gun, and military-style tracksuit in Stoyanka on May 22.
11
Local children in the Kharkiv region man a "block post" on May 5 that mimics the checkpoints now commonplace across Ukraine.
12
Andriy, aged 12, takes cover in a bunker made from discarded bricks in Stoyanka on May 22.
13
Sasha, 8, shows off a toy pistol in front of a heavily damaged apartment building in Mariupol on April 21.
14
A boy plays with his plastic rifle at a tent camp for evacuated civilians in the Donetsk region on March 24.
15
Andriy, 12, and Valentyn, 6, play in a foxhole dug near their homes in Stoyanka on May 22.
