Amid more than 1,400 days of fighting and bloodshed, Ukraine's children have been displaced, orphaned and killed in Russian President Vladimir Putin's war.
Some of those who survived have written of their sadness, hope and aspirations.
Others are warning they may yet face a difficult future due to the psychological torment and lack of adequate education they have lived with in recent years.
Kateryna, 17, is from Kharkiv but was forced to move to Kyiv to escape conflict.
She lost her dad, who was fighting for Ukraine.
"The last four years have completely flipped my life upside down."
Maksym, 13, is from the southern city of Oleshky.
His hometown was among the first to be occupied by Russian forces.
He used to dream about going to school to see friends. Now he longs for a life without wailing sirens.
"I learned pretty early what fear and not knowing what tomorrow will bring feel like."
Gloria, 12, remembers fleeing her home in Boyarka, near Kyiv, with the sound of fighter jets overhead.
She still wakes frightened at night when her bedroom becomes illuminated by explosive flashes outside.
"These four years, my country has been crying. And I dream that this crying will turn into joy and laughter."
Kateryna, Maksym and Gloria are among more than two-and-a-half million Ukrainian children displaced from their home cities.
More than 791,000 children still live in Ukraine. Almost 1.8 million others have been forced to seek refuge abroad, according to the United Nations humanitarian aid organisation UNICEF.
Between February 24, 2022 — the day Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began — and February this year, more than 15,000 civilians died.
At least another 41,000 were injured in the war, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement.
[DW Russia occupation]More civilians were killed and injured in 2025 than in the previous two years of fighting, the OHCHR said.
For many Ukrainians, the conditions of war have persisted far longer than the past four years.
Between February and March 2014, pro-Russian forces began to annex the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.
The OHCHR deemed it illegal and many Ukrainians say it ignited the beginning of the invasion of their homeland.
By 2024, more than 50,000 Ukrainians were displaced, and more than 100 activists and journalists were forcibly disappeared, the UN department said in a report.
Many Ukrainian children have endured living in a war zone for their entire lives.
In the days leading to Christmas in 2025, some children wrote letters to the international relief charity World Vision that were shared with the ABC.
In them, they described how the war altered their childhoods.
Kateryna wrote of how Ukraine's invasion reshaped her dreams for her future.
"My dreams used to be so normal: celebrating graduation with classmates, getting a new phone, redoing my room, having lots of money," she wrote.
"Now, everything's different. I dream of helping people, becoming a doctor, living to old age, finding someone to love.
"There's so much I could say, so many horrors of war I could tell. But the one thing I truly want is for other children, in other countries, to never, ever experience war.
"To never have to learn to distinguish what's flying towards you — a drone, a guided aerial bomb, an S-300, or a ballistic missile.
"To never be thousands of kilometres away from home, completely without friends, and to never pray during another mass attack: 'Please, just not our building, I haven't had enough time to do so much, to say so much, to see so much.'"
Every holiday has become a reason to share "hopes and wishes" for the future, she wrote.
"Every candle on a cake, every wish on New Year's Eve — for victory, for peaceful skies, for our defenders to come home," she said.
[DW Ukraine cities]Another boy, 10-year-old Maksym, grew up in the southern city of Mykolaiv. He dreams of becoming a train driver.
Captured by Russians in March 2022, the city is on Ukraine's Pivdennyi Buh River — an inlet of water that connects to the Black Sea.
"These last four years were super hard for me and my family," he wrote in his letter.
"Before the war, I really wanted to go to school, meet my classmates, and make new friends. Also, I wanted to go to a water park and go to the sea every summer because I love the sea so much.
"But the war stopped all of that. Now I learn from home, and I haven't been to the sea for four years.
"My biggest wish for the holidays is for the war to end. I feel happy for the holidays, but only like, half-happy."
Another girl, Maria, who was eight years old in 2022, wrote about remembering to pack her school bag before bed the night before Russia invaded.
"My dream was interrupted by my mum's gentle, quiet, but worried voice: 'Wake up, explosions!'" she wrote.
"That's when my life turned into a 'before' and 'after'.
"We drove to my grandparents' village. It was scary, and I was thinking about my little bird — we didn't take him with us.
"Mum comforted me. She said she and dad would be back soon. But we could only go home after half a year. My little bird died.
"In these four years, I've changed four schools, four groups of classmates."
Since moving to Kyiv, Maria said she learned horseback riding and felt hopeful for the future.
"I try to think about good things … I believe everything will be OK," she wrote.
Before the war, Artemiy, 11, wanted to travel.
His family also relocated to Kyiv from Kharkiv to escape conflict, and so he could continue his schooling.
"My life has changed a lot in the last four years," he wrote in his letter.
"I left my home and my friends … Now in Kyiv, I go to school because in Kharkiv, schools only work online."
He now only wishes for peace for his homeland.
"I want to go home to see my dad, so that it's quiet and rockets and drones aren't flying," he wrote.
"I believe everything will be okay and the war will end soon."
When missiles first rained down over Kyiv in 2022, Gloria said her family was instantly gripped by fear.
"We didn't really know where we were going or for how long," she wrote.
"We packed our things to the sound of jet planes, sometimes hiding under the table with my brother because it was so loud.
"Our hearts were pounding, and the noise made us jump. My mum was worried."
Gloria's family joined hundreds of others who fled in the night in cars that became stuck in traffic jams on highways out of Ukraine's major cities.
"Around us, there were many tanks, their guns pointed at us," she wrote.
"The car turned into a forest, and we sped over hills and rough terrain. Behind us, there were explosions and gunfire.
"We eventually got onto another road where there were no tanks, but many cars with white sheets and signs that said, 'children'."
Gloria said she became accustomed to wartime words such as "MiG", "air defence" and "patriot".
It also became normal for Ukrainian children to try to enjoy sheltering underground, away from incoming missile strikes, Gloria said
"We go into the corridor and weave nets for our defenders," she wrote.
"I hope that soon the war will end, and I will buy a cockatiel and teach it to sing the Ukrainian anthem.
"I wish many children could live peacefully and quietly … and that we never remember sad moments."
The trauma of Ukraine's 'stolen childhood' laid bare
Alona Sirant is a mum from Kyiv who relocated her family to Australia in March 2022 for safety and to be closer to her husband's family.
Her son, Illia, was 10 at the time and continues to live with a heightened sense of survivor's guilt.
For three years, he did not cry or speak about his emotions, Ms Sirant said.
"In his mind, it was simple: 'This is war, I must survive, no one will help me,'" she said.
"It's heartbreaking. Children carry the war with them even to a safe country.
"These kids are incredibly resilient … But they've lost their trust in the world."
Ms Sirant's parents, older sister and nieces still live in Ukraine.
She tries to call them daily so Illia can maintain his connection to them.
"He's so happy to see how they are still alive, but he [gets] nervous," she said.
"He couldn't say [to them], 'Oh my goodness, today I had an ice cream or watched a movie'.
"He says, 'mum it's not good because they are not safe'."
Illia's experience is not unique.
Ms Sirant said after she arrived in Australia, she held frequent video support calls with displaced and traumatised children still living in Ukraine.
One of the more harrowing cases involved a 12-year-old boy from Kharkiv, she said.
"In our first sessions, we just sat in silence. He just needed someone to be with," Ms Sirant said.
"He felt he had to protect his parents, so he didn't sleep at night, he didn't make friends at school because he was afraid to lose them.
"[These children have] grown up too fast … they take care of other children, other friends and even their parents — if they still have parents, but they've stopped themselves to feel fear or love. It's trauma."
Ms Sirant said she hopes the world does not forget "the human cost of this invasion".
She now describes the impact of the war as "Ukraine's stolen childhood".
"Russia hasn't just invaded a country; it has robbed an entire generation of their right to be kids," she said.
"We need to call this what it is: A deliberate attempt to break the future of Ukraine."
The next danger for Ukrainian children
Ukrainian children now face an additional threat, World Vision Ukraine's crisis response director Arman Grigoryan said.
Ukraine's children have not properly attended school or received an adequate education since at least 2020 because of the war and COVID-19 restrictions, he said.
It has created a "multiplying effect" on the psychological state of Ukrainian children, he said.
"The children are growing under the current circumstances and situation with all the stressors that are around them … in a much faster way than normally a child would do," Mr Grigoryan said
"Even when you talk with them, sometimes a smile wants to come out, but at the same time you feel through their eyes that there is a lot of sadness and a lot of stress."
In parts of Ukraine, "child-friendly spaces" have been created in shelters and other centres to offer children an opportunity to maintain friendships and speak with teachers and support workers.
Mr Grigoryan said the spaces were designed to allow children to temporarily escape the realities of war.
"There is this moment when we try to distract the kids from the day-to-day to focus on a painting or [by] doing some craft," he said.
"[So] that they will detach from the current state of reality and go into a mood of creating something positive.
"In that moment, it's like it's a different moment, it's a different time. It's like they're not in [the war]."
