Tragically, as in most wars, children are most vulnerable, and the Ukraine conflict is no different. Photo: submitted to the BBC

Don’t take it personally kid, it wasn’t aimed at you. If it’s any consolation, you’re not a name, why you’re not even a number.

If it’s any consolation, you’re collateral damage. It makes no difference to your blown-off limbs, but it helps the invader to keep doing it. Solace of semantics, if you will.

They don’t have anything that precise. Sure, you can see all that super technology on the television or on the computer, drones pinpointing an enemy stronghold, targeting the left eye of an enemy, press of a button, target neutralised (more semantics, their head was blown off). But who has time for that when you’re invading an entire country?

The hard-hearted would say you shouldn’t have been in a war zone. That’s your parents’ fault. They f–k you up your mum and dad, eh? Philip Larkin said that, a poet. And he wasn’t even talking about wars.

Invasions aren’t playtime, there’s noise and flashes, dust and debris everywhere. Not what a kid is used to. It’s a small comfort, but at least you’re still alive. And keep this in mind, when the invaders take over, they don’t do gulags or concentration camps anymore. That was in the bad old days of war. Just follow the rules of the new overlords and you’ll be fine.

Some might say that your hospital was actually a target for cynical reasons, that if children are the future then they don’t want you kids growing up and harbouring hatred towards the ones doing what they’re doing now, that is firing bombs at you, your parents, their friends, their countrymen and women. How stupid would it be to allow that to ferment? In 20 years, there could be a revolution.

Truth is, the invaders are too lazy for all that. Easiest thing to do is just bombard and bombard and bombard until there’s nothing left of your world. And the easiest thing to use are “dumb bombs”.

The aim, ironically, is not to be too specific. These bombs are not precision instruments, you let them fall and they’re on their own. And to be fair, they’ve been used before. America did it against Saddam Hussein in Operation Desert Storm.

Defence analyst Robert English was reported in the Smithsonian magazine saying 90 per cent of the ammunitions employed in Desert Storm were “dumb weapons”. They were lucky to get within half a kilometre of their targets after they were dumped from planes. “While dumb bombs might not have been exciting enough to garner the headlines during the attack, they were cheaper to produce and could be counted on to work.”

A US Defence official also said the administration believed Russia was deploying “dumb bombs”.

The toll in Ukraine of civilian deaths is more than 400, including some who were just queueing up for bread, and three at a hospital, including a child.

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A Kremlin spokesman said: “Russian forces do not fire on civilian targets.”

A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said that claims Russia would do such a thing was “information terrorism”.

It’s also no consolation, kid, to know that truth is the first casualty in war. If you’re the invader, it has to be.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the hospital bombing genocide.

“Why were they a threat to the Russian Federation? What kind of country is the Russian Federation that is afraid of hospitals, afraid of maternity wards and destroys them?”

It’s a question for which you would have thought by the 21st century humankind would have had answer. No country at all.

Yet Ukraine is but the latest, and most vicious in military deployment, in recent decades to have drawn children into the sights of rifles and bombing raids, into their torture, capture, imprisonment, indeed anything unworthy of a human.

A Save the Children report, Killed and Maimed: A Generation Of Violations Against Children In Conflict, reports that almost 100,000 children were killed or maimed in conflicts in the past 10 years. In 2019, about 426 million children lived in a conflict-affected area.

The United Nations Security Council has identified areas of violations against children in war. Some of the statistics:

– “Between 2005 and 2020, more than 104,100 children were verified killed or maimed in situations of armed conflict, with more than two-thirds of these verified since 2014.”

– “Between 2005 and 2020, more than 93,000 children were verified as recruited and used by parties to conflict, although the actual number of cases is believed to be much higher.”

– “Between 2005 and 2020, the United Nations verified more than 13,900 incidents of attacks, including direct attacks or attacks where there has not been adequate distinction between civilian and military objectives, on educational and medical facilities and protected persons, including pupils and hospitalised children, and health and school personnel.”

– “Between 2005 and 2020, parties to conflict raped, forcibly married, sexually exploited, and committed other grave forms of sexual violence against at least 14,200 children. However, the widespread stigma around rape and sexual violence means it is a particularly under-reported issue affecting children in conflict.”

– “Between 2005 and 2020, at least 25,700 children were verified as abducted by parties to conflict. Boys account for three quarters of verified instances of abducted children. However, girls remain at risk of being abducted, including for the purpose of sexual violence and exploitation.”

– “Between 2005 and 2020, more than 266,000 grave violations were verified against children, committed by parties to conflict in more than 30 conflict situations across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. The actual number is undoubtedly far higher.”

Each of these numbers had a name. Even you, kid.