As Donald Trump Appears Ready To Abandon Ukraine, Filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky Focuses On War’s Youngest Victims

deadline.com:

President Donald Trump has made it clear he’s siding with Vladimir Putin in the war in Ukraine, thereby endorsing the Kremlin leader’s sustained targeting of defenseless civilians in his campaign of annihilation.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights puts the number of Ukrainian civilian casualties – dead and injured – at more than 40,000 since Russia launched its full-scale invasion three years ago this Monday.

UNICEF says, as of last November, more than 2,400 Ukrainian children have been killed or wounded since the war’s outbreak. “The toll on children is staggering and unacceptable,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell has said. “Children have been killed in their beds, in hospitals and playgrounds, leaving families devastated by the loss of young lives or life-altering injuries.” Oscar-nominated filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky documents the war’s toll on Ukrainian children in his searing new documentary Children in the Fire, which just held a private screening at the Munich Security Conference last weekend (the very conference where Vice President J.D.

Vance lectured European governments about allowing the far-right greater sway in politics). “I have human stories and specifically stories of the kids — the next generation of Ukrainians,” Afineevsky tells Deadline of his film. “And it’s not just the next generation, it’s for whom the fathers today are fighting on the frontlines.