‘The youngest victim of Russian terrorism’: Ukraine buries two-day-old baby Serhiyko killed by shelling

Family members held the last rites on Sunday for a two-day old baby killed in a Russian attack on a hospital in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine earlier this week.

Photos shared by the Ukrainian defence ministry showed the small casket belonging to the infant being buried by his family members on Sunday.

“Serhiyko. The youngest victim of Russian terrorism. The baby lived for only two days,” the Ukrainian defence ministry said on Twitter.

It added: “For each of our children, for each of our babies, our soldiers will fight their hardest on the battlefield. But no matter how strong our rage is, we will never become like you, Russians.”

The child was killed after artillery fire hit a maternity ward in the city of Vilniansk, Zaporizhzhia, in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

“At night, Russian monsters launched huge rockets at the small maternity ward of the hospital in Vilniansk,” regional governor Oleksandr Starukh had said the next day.

“Grief fills our hearts,” he added. “A baby who has just appeared in the world has been killed.”

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky had also mourned the death of the infant on Thursday as he called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in the aftermath of a new wave of missile strikes by Russia.

“This night – another missile attack on the Zaporizhzhia region, on the hospital – on the buildings where the maternity ward was located. Russian terrorists took the life of a baby - the child was two days old when it was killed by a Russian missile!” he said.

He also called on Ukraine’s allies to help protect the skies over the war-hit country.

“We need modern and effective air defence and missile defence systems, and I thank everyone who is already helping,” Mr Zelensky had said.

The war in Ukraine has consolidated into intense fighting in the eastern regions where the Russian forces are concentrating their offensive, although missile attacks on power plants and other key energy infrastructure mean much of Kyiv and the surrounding regions are left without electricity.

At least 32 people have been killed in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson due to Russian shelling since pro-Moscow forces pulled out two weeks ago, the head of Ukraine‘s police said.

Russia calls its invasion in Ukraine a “special military operation” aimed to “de-Nazify” the former Soviet Union territory, while Kyiv has accused Moscow of more than 49,000 war crimes and crimes of aggression against civilians during the course of the war.