The children of the eastern Ukraine can tell you all about weapons, like which rocket or shell is responsible for a particular explosion and how far away the blast is. Schooled in war and its horrors, they know when it is time to run. Some live in the filth of crowded bomb shelters, their parents too fearful to return home. But at least they are with their parents. Hundreds more are orphans, consigned to life in institutions lacking fresh food and medicine, their parents dead, missing, insane or drunk, or simply too poor to take care of them. Some even disappear, spirited away into Russia by Moscow-backed fighters seeking independence from the Ukrainian government in Kiev. They are promised safety and better lives in Vladimir Putin’s vast empire but their fate remains a mystery.MailOnline reveals suffering of 'lost generation' of children hit by war between pro-Russian rebels and governmentHundreds left orphaned by fighting but others were abandoned because their mothers could not afford to feed themBabies and toddlers move into bomb shelters where they scavenge for food and play in the dirt in filthy nappiesSome children even 'disappear' amid fears they are being sent to Vladimir Putin's Russia to new homes and familiesMailOnline found children in eastern Ukraine who can identify weapons and boast of being able to shoot the enemyCentres where these boys and girls are abandoned or seek refuge can barely find enough food to keep them aliveThe mental and physical scars left by growing up in a warzone - on Europe's doorstep - will never be erasedUN has created 17 new 'global goals' to highlight poverty, mistreatment and malnutrition in children worldwide
Amidst this danger something else is happening: the disappearance of children over the border into _ proper.