Ukrainian children are dying and suffering at the hands of Russia

Warning: This story contains graphic images of a severely injured child.

They were taken from their homes and into bomb shelters, forced to flee to the border as refugees, and were injured or killed by shelling and air raids.

The images of Ukraine after the Russian invasion are heartbreaking – but none more so than the images of children suffering the horrors of war.

Hundreds and hundreds of children were left behind for all they knew when Vladimir Putin’s assault began at dawn on Thursday, rushing with their families to border countries ready to take them in.

Below, a boy peeks behind a curtain after fleeing from Ukraine to Romania, while a girl pushes a stroller towards the Shehyni border crossing to Poland.

Many families unable to get out in time have left their homes — intact or dilapidated — in search of a safer environment. Here, a family along with hundreds of residents fled a residential building hit by a Russian missile to take shelter in the basement of a school in Kyiv on Friday.

Others crammed into train stations as Russian troops pushed deeper into the country on Saturday. Here, a woman holds a sleeping child in the central train station of Lviv, western Ukraine.

Daniel Leal / AFP via Getty

At a humanitarian center in Lviv on Sunday, a young girl joined the Ukrainian effort to fight the Russian army, helping sort out empty bottles that could be turned into Molotov cocktails.

Yuriy Dyachyshyn / AFP via Getty

Ukrainian officials said on Saturday that 116 children had been injured and 14 had died in the invasion. An Associated Press photographer on Sunday witnessed the death of a 6-year-old girl.

An ambulance took the child still wearing unicorn pajamas to a hospital in the port city of Mariupol after she and her father were injured by shelling.

Members of the medical team shed tears as they struggled to save her.

“Show Putin this,” a doctor told the photographer, who was allowed into the hospital to document their efforts. “The eyes of this child, and the doctors are crying.”

Evgeniy Maloletka / AP Photo