Pictured at city hospital of Mariupol, eastern Ukraine
(Picture: AP)Heart-rending images of a dying young girl being brought into a hospital as medics battled in vain to save her on Monday gave distressing new evidence of the horror of Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine.
The unnamed six-year-old was pictured first being given cardio-pulmonary resuscitation by a paramedic as she arrived by ambulance at a hospital in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, after being injured during Russian shelling of a residential area of the city.
Doctors carried on the fight to help her pull through as she lay minutes later on an operating table but she did not survive.
One man watching the desperate attempts to save her can be seen holding his face in anguish.
The Evening Standard has taken the decision to publish the distressing photos to highlight the brutality and tragic consequences of the Russian invasion.
Another young victim was named on Monday as Polina, a girl in her final year of primary school in Kyiv, who was shot dead with her parents by a Russian sabotage and reconnaissance unit operating in the Ukrainian capital.
Her sister, who was last heard of fighting for her life in intensive care, and injured brother were taken to separate hospitals.
Other child victims include seven-year-old Alisa Hians, who was killed when her kindergarten in Okhtyrka, a small town in the north-west, was hit during a Russian attack.
Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, said 16 children had been killed and 45 wounded since Russian forces attacked.
Meanwhile, in Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was under pressure to open the door wider to Ukrainian refugees as opposition politicians and charities condemned as insufficient a Home Office plan to limit entry largely to those with close family members already here.
There were demands instead for Britain to follow the EU, which on Sunday agreed to allow those fleeing the fighting to stay for three years without any need to apply for asylum.
The UN’s refugee agency has estimated that seven million Ukrainians could be displaced, with as many as four and a half million leaving the country.
The plight of children was highlighted today by haunting testimony from refugees on an evacuation train from Kyiv, which was halted for hours because of gridlock.
Mother-of-four Svetlana Panina, 43, a psychotherapist, was forced to flee because of the fear the city would be obliterated.
In a plaintive online message, she said: “My children begged to take them out of Kyiv. We have been on the train for 12 hours. The children in the carriage are crying. The younger ones want to go home to their dads. Those that are older understand all the horror. War is always war against children. I am saving my children.
“With the desperation of a cat that grabs kittens by the scruff of the neck and flies wherever their eyes look. I try my best to keep my eyes dry. I’ll cry if I’m lucky enough to get the kids to a safe place where they can at least lie down.
“I will endure everything, anything, just to take the children alive to a place where they will fall to the floor from a slamming door. I will cry later.”
