Ukraine War: Viola's Story | Ukraine: The Children's Story | Newsround

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Last year, 13-year-old Viola had to escape her home in the middle of the night after her village was taken over by Russian soldiers.

Viola revisits home and looks through the wreckage where her home once stood
"We didn't even have time to look back at our house and we didn't know where we were going," she says.

Viola tells me how the Russian soldiers destroyed everything. "One night, we felt a huge explosion, it lit up my bedroom, shaking the house and waking us up.

"We kept running through other people's gardens with the sound of bullets whistling near our feet."

Viola, her younger sister and mum managed to escape and were evacuated to a safer part of Ukraine.

She invited me to take a look at where her house once stood. There are no bricks, doors or windows. A twisted pile of metal, some old pots and pans and charred wood is all that's left.

The memories of what happened here are hard for Viola to relive, but like lots of the children I've met in Ukraine, she is determined to carry on with the things that make her happy, like playing the piano and spending time with her dog.

We kept running through other people's gardens with the sound of bullets whistling near our feet.

Viola, age 13
Later that night, I return to our hotel in the centre of Kyiv. All the street lights are off so people carry torches to see where they're going. Huge churches with golden domes are now shrouded in darkness.

Many families in Ukraine are living different lives now.

The war in Ukraine is the biggest in Europe since World War II. Millions of children have been forced to leave their homes to escape the fighting, but many either others couldn’t or didn’t.

Hearing from just some of those who are living through war, this film lets the children caught in the conflict tell their stories in their own words. Covering fear, loss, strength and hope, they detail the life-changing events of the war and the impact it is having on their day-to-day life. They share their experiences of surviving attacks from the air, being forced to live for weeks at a time in bomb shelters, and their towns and villages becoming occupied by Russian soldiers.

A year on and on the Ukraine War Anniversary, Ricky Boleto finds out how the children are coping with living in a country at war. Watch the full Newsround special episode Ukraine: The Children's Story on BBC iPlayer.

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