Russian troops are using Ukrainian children as human shields, placing them on the front of tanks to avoid being hit by artillery as the forces retreat, The Guardian reported Sunday.

Witness reports from liberated areas surrounding the capital city of Kyiv say Russian tanks are taking local children hostage to use them to protect their tanks as they roll out amid a Russian withdrawal, ensuring protection from attacks by locals.

Ukraine's attorney general is cataloging the accounts as it builds a case book of unethical Russian military violations.

"Enemies have been using Ukrainian children as a living shield when moving their convoys, moving their vehicles," according to Col. Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, Ukraine defense ministry spokesman. "Russian soldiers have used Ukrainian children as hostages, putting them on their trucks. They're doing it to protect their vehicles when moving.

"There have been cases of brutal behavior against minors been recorded, documented by a Ukrainian and international institutions, and we'd like to emphasize that information in each and every case will be given to the national criminal courts, and the occupiers will be brought to justice for each and every military and war crime they commit."

The accounts first were seen in Bucha, near Kyiv, while buses of children were placed in front of Russian tanks near Chernihiv, 100 miles north of the capital, The Guardian reported.

"Cases of using children as cover are recorded in Sumy, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhia oblasts," Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Lyudmila Denisova told the paper.

Since the invasion began Feb. 24, there has been 158 children killed and another 254 injured during the war.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told The Guardian there is a "rapid retreat" near Kyiv, but Russia still intends to split the country by homing in on the contested eastern and southern regions.

"After the rapid retreat of the Russians from Kyiv and Chernihiv, and if we analyze all the redeployment and concentration of occupying troops, it is clear that Russia has prioritized another tactic – to move east/south, to control large occupied territories [not only in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts] and gain a strong foothold there," Podolyak told the paper.

"[Russia] will try to dig in there, put [in] air defense and thus sharply reduce the loss of his equipment and personnel."

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