Women and children - and men, why forget them? - are dying every day because Mr Putin is a savage, illegally invading a sovereign country. If that invaded country wishes to defend itself, that is a matter for that country and them alone. Nobody dies if Putin is not a savage.
My personal opinion is that Zelenskiiy and his government should have gone into exile when it became clear that the savage in Moscow was keen, once more, to prove his savagery. Doing so could possibly have spared some from the savagery of the St. Petersburg savage. But, that's an easy position for me to take living here in Berlin.
The bitter truth for those - including me - who think a tactical retreat would have been better for civilians (in terms of whether they lived or died) is that we are not the ones who will then be subjugated by the savage. In that sense, this is a matter for Ukrainians and them alone.