Children in Ukraine have spent a combined six months of their lives under an air raid alert, a new analysis has found as the war passed the four-year mark on Tuesday.
The later months of 2025 saw an increase in the duration of alarms across Ukraine, as Russia intensified its air attacks and ramped up its use of drones to target Ukrainian civilians.
Children in Ukraine have now endured an average of around 4,000 hours of air raid alarms, equalling more than five and a half months of constant alerts since Vladimir Putin’s forces began their full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to Save the Children’s analysis of official alert data on sirens.
“It is constant emotional strain. Adults feel it, but children feel it more deeply. The nervous system is exhausted,” said Veronika, the mother of an eight-year-old, Anastasiia. “When children hear an explosion, they worry, they get nervous.”
Charities and parents in Ukraine are concerned about the psychological pressure Russia’s air warfare is putting on children.
This has only increasingly become the case, as Moscow ramped up its use of drones to target civilians by more than 200 per cent in 2025, according to figures from the conflict monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED). This meant that no region in Ukraine was safe from air alerts and Russian strikes.
Children in the Kyiv region and in other frontline areas have been hit the hardest since February 2022, facing 7,000 hours of air raid alerts, equalling around 9.5 months.
For many Ukrainians, air raid alerts sound multiple times a day, forcing families to take cover in basements, subway stations, or other bomb shelters. Often they are without easy access to water, electricity, and heating.
War fatigue in Ukraine has also seen families avoid safer, deeper shelters, occasionally opting for hallways or bathrooms away from the outside of the building.
Sirens can last from just a few minutes to several hours, and sometimes longer. Save the Children says they prevent children from being able to go to school, and also affect sleep schedules, with around 50 per cent happening in the late evening or at night.
“Despite playing no part in the war, children are paying the heaviest price, including damage to their psychological wellbeing,” Sonia Khush, country director for Save the Children Ukraine, said.
“Four years of full-scale war in Ukraine have shattered children’s lives and ripped away their childhoods as they’ve been forced from their homes and schools, lost loved ones and lived in fear as air raid alerts, drones and explosions consume the world around them.”
“For some children, the only world they have known is one filled with air raid alerts that disrupt their sleep, interrupt their learning, stop their play, and signal constant, life-threatening danger day after day,” she added.
