Zelenskyy urges worldwide protest against Russia as parents fear for children’s future

*Ukrainian President declares Russia has started the war against freedom, as Moscow is trying ‘to defeat the freedom of all people in Europe, of all people in the world’

Alexander Davis | ConsumerConnect

As Russian troops continued their attacks on Ukrainian cities, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged people around the world to demonstrate Thursday, March 24, 2022, to mark a month since the start of Russia’s attack of Ukraine.

It was gathered President Zelenskyy in a video message early Thursday said: “Come from your offices, your homes, your schools and universities.

“Come in the name of peace, come with Ukrainian symbols to support Ukraine, to support freedom, life.

“Come to your squares and streets, make yourself visible and heard.

A Ukrainian refugee holds his sleeping child in a bus after landing at Zurich Airport from Krakow in a plane chartered by a Swiss millionaire at Zurich Airport March 22, 2022

“Say that people matter, freedom matters, Ukraine matters.”

According to the Ukrainian President, Russia started the war against freedom as it is, adding, Moscow is trying to defeat the freedom of all people in Europe, of all people in the world.

“For that reason, I ask you to stand against the war starting from March 24, exactly one month after the Russian invasion,” said he.

Fighting reportedly continued around the besieged city of Izyum, the Ukrainian generals said in a daily report posted on Facebook early Thursday.

Parents concerned about children’s future as Russia-Ukraine war rages

In a related development, an air raid siren blares and tears fill Vasiliy Kravchuk’s eyes as he surveys the wreckage of the school his six-year-old son was meant to start next year.

“It’s hard, it’s very hard,” sobs the 37-year-old who works at the tourism organisation for Zhytomyr, a garrison town west of Kyiv where no tourists now come, agency report stated.

It was learnt the city with its broad, picturesque river spanned by a suspension bridge has suffered a series of devastating Russian strikes since the start of the war.

The regional maternity hospital was badly damaged by a blast on March 2, while School Number 25 was destroyed on March 4.

Zhytomyr has been spared the devastation of cities like Mariupol in the south, but it remains in Russia’s sights as its troops attempt to encircle Kyiv from the west, report said.

Kravchuk, wearing a bright pink hoodie and rubbing his eyes, said: “Every day it’s 20, 30 times we go to the basement (to shelter).

“It’s difficult because my wife is pregnant, I have a little son,” says Kravchuk, wearing a bright pink hoodie and rubbing his eyes.

His son had been looking forward to starting at the school, but now it is a pile of concrete, with a shelf full of schoolbooks hanging over a void where a wall used to be.

Describing what is going on in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin says the “special military operation” his country launched February 24, 2022, is aimed at the “demilitarisation and denazification” of Ukraine.

However, Ukraine’s prosecutor general has said Russia is committing genocide in Mariupol, and many in Zhytomyr believe the violence Moscow has unleashed across the country amounts to the same thing.

Svitlana Kovalchuk, a 50-year-old chemistry teacher at the school, during a visit arranged by the Ukrainian Government said: “This is, indeed, genocide of the Ukrainian people. “Because the civilians suffer, innocent children, suffer, newborn children, children from our school, children from the whole country suffer.”

Likewise, at the Zhytomyr regional maternity centre on the other side of town, report indicated that mothers cradled their newborn babies in tiny rooms in a sweltering basement where they hide from bombs.

The windows of the hospital were blown in by powerful strikes that hit a nearby residential area, leaving the maternity wards unuseable.

“They (Russia) want to rip us off of our future,” says Nadia Skutelnyk, 29, showing off her four-day-old daughter Stephania’s tiny fingers.

The hospital has moved most of its equipment underground and has even set up its own operating theatre.

Medical director Olena Ostryiko says she “cannot understand” why “the enemy” bombed so close to the hospital.

“Why the civilians, why the children, why the kindergartens, why hospitals, why? I cannot understand. But we know that the enemy’s aim is the genocide of Ukrainian people,” she stated.

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