Children go underground as Ukraine starts new school year under constant Russian fire
Ukraine’s School Year Starts Underground
Goldlaner.com – Children go underground as Ukraine opens its fifth wartime school year. On Tuesday morning, students at the Ukrainian Global School in Kyiv skipped the hallway entirely and descended into a basement where their lessons would run for the full academic calendar. Days of sustained Russian strikes on the capital had rendered the old drill — sprinting to shelters every time a siren shrieked — impractical. Families learned of the relocation through a letter attached to the first day’s schedule.
“This is a significant change. Now, during an air raid alert, there’s no need to run anywhere, interrupt classes, or wait for hours to resume learning. The children are already where it’s safe. We simply continue.”
The letter’s authors threaded a line of dark humor through the announcement, framing the move as taking education “to a whole new level.” The phrase lands differently when the alternative is a rooftop under rocket fire.
Sixty Sirens in Seventy-Two Hours
The days immediately before the school opening brought Kyiv what officials described as the longest and most intense sustained aerial campaign of the war. Between midnight on Thursday and noon on Tuesday, air-raid sirens sounded sixty times, accumulating roughly forty-seven hours of continuous alert. Municipal authorities confirmed at least fifty-three deaths and more than one hundred injuries across the capital and its surrounding oblast in that window.
The escalation departs sharply from earlier patterns. Moscow has bombed Ukrainian cities since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, but the tempo of aerial terror against civilians stepped up markedly at the start of last year once mass-production lines for Iranian-designed Shahed drones came online. For a stretch, those barrages concentrated overnight, when air defenses faced fewer simultaneous targets. In recent months the rhythm has shifted to around-the-clock strikes powered by a newer generation of jet-propelled drones travelling at roughly three times the speed of the original Shahed airframes. Ukrainian interceptors struggle to track and down them, leaving cities exposed for longer stretches of each day.
A Generation Without a Peacetime Classroom
The timing carries a weight hard to grasp from outside Ukraine. The full-scale invasion launched just as the world was emerging from the pandemic. Pupils entering eighth grade on Tuesday represent the youngest cohort that has experienced even a single uninterrupted year of normal schooling. Children heading into fifth grade or below have never sat in a peacetime classroom. For them, the basement is not an anomaly; it is simply where school happens.
Kyiv’s municipal office urged parents to rehearse alert procedures at home and prepare children for the likelihood that attacks will interrupt lessons. The office framed the exercise in familiar domestic terms:
“In the current circumstances, we are talking about something just as important as packing a school bag or getting the school uniform ready.”
The President Visits — From a Shelter
President Volodymyr Zelensky travelled to a Kyiv school to mark the first day of the academic year. The children, dressed in their finest clothes — boys in button-down shirts, girls with traditional ribbons woven into their hair — were visibly thrilled to see him. Their excitement was tempered by the setting: the meeting took place inside a shelter rather than a classroom because another air alarm had sounded during the visit.
“There is an air raid alert right now. Unfortunately, the Russians are despicable … even among enemies, there is usually an understanding that children are children,” Zelensky told reporters.
Empty Seats and a Shrinking Student Body
As the war stretches into its fifth school year, the human cost becomes visible in the arithmetic of enrollment. UNICEF estimates that more than 1.8 million Ukrainian children now live abroad, with additional hundreds of thousands displaced internally. Ukraine’s Ministry of Education reported that approximately 243,398 first-graders entered school on Tuesday — a figure far below the roughly 400,000 who began primary education in 2021, before the invasion. The gap represents families who fled, children who died, and parents who chose to keep their children out of classrooms altogether.
Nadiia Andrianova, whose nine-year-old daughter Aiia started third grade on Tuesday, is among the parents who opted to relocate. She described a gradual deterioration in Kyiv’s security environment that she first noticed in the preceding months and that ultimately made staying untenable.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did the Ukrainian Global School move classes to a basement?
Repeated Russian strikes on Kyiv made the previous routine of evacuating to shelters during each air-raid alert unsustainable. Moving lessons underground eliminates the need to interrupt classes and wait for hours before resuming.
How many air-raid alerts sounded in Kyiv before the school opening?
Sixty sirens sounded between midnight on Thursday and noon on Tuesday, totalling roughly forty-seven hours of continuous alert. At least fifty-three people were killed and more than one hundred injured in the capital and surrounding oblast during that period.
How many first-graders started school in Ukraine this year?
Approximately 243,398 first-graders entered school on Tuesday, compared with roughly 400,000 in 2021 before the full-scale invasion. UNICEF estimates over 1.8 million Ukrainian children now live abroad.
What type of drones are driving the current escalation?
A newer generation of jet-propelled drones moving at roughly three times the speed of the original Iranian-designed Shahed airframes. Their speed makes interception harder and extends the window during which cities remain exposed.
