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Lena said there was never any question that she and her common-law husband, Serihy - each on their second marriage, with adult children who long since left home - would take in Tymophiy and Seraphim. In a brutal conflict heavily documented on social media and in news photographs, there was some reticence at first over circulating images of tiny corpses. “They’ve either lost a family member, or they have. “I would say that every single child in Ukraine, their lives have been touched by this war,” Afshan Khan, the regional director of UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, told reporters at the world body in June. It’s as if childhood itself has been scoured away and something terrible has taken its place. At least 348 children have been reported killed as of mid-July, Ukrainian officials said, but those numbers, which do not include an accounting from still-occupied areas, are acknowledged to be low, probably dramatically so. About one-third of them, more than 7.5 million youngsters, are displaced from their homes, according to United Nations estimates. The war in Ukraine has been uniquely horrific for its children. Shelling shook the village for nearly three more weeks, before the Russians pulled back as abruptly as they had come, abandoning their bid to seize the capital and regathering in the east. Like hundreds of other civilians killed by Russian troops in the once-placid Kyiv suburbs - many people slain execution-style, some corpses bearing signs of torture - Yulia and Serozha had to be buried temporarily in makeshift graves. The bodies of the couple - who died from large-caliber fire aimed nearly point-blank at their car by a Russian tank - lay mutilated, unretrieved and alone inside their silver Opel Vectra for three days while Tymophiy’s uncle tried to negotiate safe passage to collect the remains. His aunt and uncle had held back yet more unbearable news. “I found out what happened to my mom and Serozha,” reads a March 14 entry, nearly a week after the deaths. In slashing red ink, he drew a horned devil with angry darts shooting from its eyes. Tymophiy raged to his diary, his fury at first overwhelming his grief. It was Seraphim - the unnoticed little eavesdropper, overhearing low-voiced, anguished adult conversations - who blurted out the truth. More days went by, and Lena and Serihy made excuses over Yulia and Serozha’s absence.