As Ukraine mourns its dead, over 100 empty strollers were lined up in Lviv's Rynok central square Friday to commemorate the children killed in the country since Russia's invasion.
Citizens in Lviv, which is known as Ukraine's gateway to the West, placed 109 strollers or prams, in neat rows – one for each child killed since the start of the war, tweeted the Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey. The attacks launched by Russia on Ukraine on Feb. 24 continues unabated for 23 days. Since the beginning of the invasion, a total of 109 children have lost their lives and 130 children have been injured.
Two stuffed teddy bears were laid in a bright blue baby carrier. A little girl sitting on a bench held a small Ukrainian flag. Another girl is seen with a toy pram amidst the empty strollers.
There are car seats for infants and strollers with covered hoods, line after line after line, next to a statue boxed and clad with shining corrugated metal – protection from airstrikes.
Kateryna Bandzhanova, 29, walks past pushing her 11-month-old daughter Solomia in a pushchair.
For a moment it is the only occupied baby carriage on the whole cobbled square.
"I feel completely in pain," she told Agence France-Presse (AFP), trying and failing to hold back tears. "Pain for the future of the country because children are the future.
"When they kill children, they kill the future of this country – its heart and its soul."
At the edge of the cordoned installation, organized by the Ukrainian government, a printed placard says 108 children have died. But in felt marker pen the eight has been hastily crossed out and replaced with a nine. The death toll was out of date not long after being printed.
Lviv in western Ukraine has drawn hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians seeking shelter away from the front line of the war.
Oksentiya Ruba, who expressed her sadness for what happened, said, "I feel very sorry for what happened and for all our people in Ukraine," reported Turkey's Sabah newspaper.
Noting that she has no children herself, Ruba said: "Even if I don't have children, I think of the whole of Ukraine as one family. I cried a lot while setting up the baby carriages in the square. This was a very difficult task for me. I dreamed of a child in every stroller I left."
"Remember your children when they were small and sitting in strollers like these," said Zhuravka Natalia Tonkovyt, a Canadian citizen of Ukrainian origin who was passing by, speaking as if to address Russian mothers, reported Reuters.
"Some (children) will not be put into these strollers because they are dead. Compare it to your own children, remember your feelings toward your own children ... I want to see no empty stroller," she added.
Russia says its action in Ukraine is a "special military operation" and that it is not targeting civilians.
Children in crosshairs
Since Russia announced its special military operation three weeks ago, there have been numerous strikes on civilian targets housing children.
Last week, a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol was bombed, wounding 17.
On Wednesday a theater there was hit despite signs declaring children were sheltering inside.
More than 130 have been saved from the rubble but officials said up to 1,000 may have been taking refuge within.
Ukraine says shelling and airstrikes have damaged 439 "educational institutions," 63 of which have been razed to the ground.
Many families fleeing conflict in the eastern portion of Ukraine have fled to the west.
The city of Lviv – usually home to 700,000 – has swollen with refugees bound for the Polish border and displaced citizens hoping to wait out the conflict in relative safety.
Bandzhanova, a business analyst, left her home in Boryspil near the largest airport in the capital of Kyiv for fears it would be targeted.
But in the dawn hours of Friday, an aircraft repair plant was struck near Lviv's airport.
A thick pall of smoke hung above the city's southwest skyline for much of the morning.
"At night when you hear sirens you wake up, each small sound makes you flinch," she said.
"Maybe I need to flee with my kids somewhere further away."