When children encounter war it is not as the thing that Carl von Clausewitz called politics “by other means.” It is to their terrified eyes an impersonal force, one that takes away a parent or obliges one to hide, steals food from a plate or turns a school into rubble. War heightens the already helpless state of childhood. It removes the last vestiges of predictability and sense, offering randomness and brute violence instead — bombs that may crash through a ceiling at any moment.
Russia's War Against Ukraine
New York Times: What does war feel like to a child? (Book Review)
A woman walks her children home from school in the frontline town of Zolote, eastern Ukraine, on Sept. 11, 2019. In the town, Ukrainian and Russian-backed military positions are sometimes as close as 50 meters from each other.
