Children go underground as Ukraine starts new school year under constant Russian fire

Ukraine’s School Year Opens in Bomb Shelters

Healfromzero.com – Children go underground as Ukraine enters its fifth straight academic year shaped by war. This autumn’s first day of classes in Kyiv arrived not with a morning bell but with the wail of air-raid sirens. At the Ukrainian Global School in the capital, pupils arriving on Tuesday were routed directly into the building’s basement, where every lesson for the duration of each alert would now take place below ground.

Why the Basement Became the Classroom

Days of sustained Russian strikes had rendered the old routine — sprinting to shelter at every siren, waiting out the alarm, then resuming lessons upstairs — no longer workable. The school’s letter to parents framed the shift in deliberately light language, describing the relocation as taking education “to a whole new level.” The levity, however, sat atop a backdrop of bombardment that has made ordinary routines in Kyiv feel fragile.

“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. And school simply continues.”

Children go underground as Ukraine’s capital endures what authorities describe as the longest and most ferocious aerial campaign of the entire conflict. Between midnight on Thursday and noon on Tuesday, sirens sounded sixty times across Kyiv, accumulating roughly forty-seven hours of continuous warning. Local officials confirmed at least fifty-three deaths and more than one hundred injuries in the city and surrounding oblast over that span.

A Drone Threat That Never Sleeps

The strike pattern has shifted sharply since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Early in the war, Russian forces relied on overnight barrages of Iranian-designed Shahed drones timed to exploit gaps in Ukrainian air defenses while the population slept. That calculus changed at the start of last year, when Russian factories reached mass production of the Shahed platform and introduced a new generation of jet-powered drones. These faster craft — roughly three times the speed of their predecessor — have proven extraordinarily difficult for Ukrainian interceptors to track, forcing continuous day-and-night attacks rather than discrete nocturnal waves.

Ukraine is racing to field next-generation interceptor systems, yet the gap between offensive volume and defensive capacity remains wide enough to keep sirens sounding around the clock. Children go underground as Ukraine’s schools adapt to a threat environment that shows no sign of abating.

A Generation That Knows Only War

For many pupils returning to desks on Tuesday, an uninterrupted school day exists only as an abstraction. Because the full-scale invasion coincided with the world’s emergence from pandemic lockdowns, children now entering eighth grade represent the youngest cohort of Ukrainians who ever experienced normal, unbroken schooling. Those heading into fifth grade or below have never sat in a peacetime classroom.

Kyiv’s municipal authorities issued back-to-school guidance urging parents to walk their children through alert procedures alongside packing school bags and preparing uniforms. “In the current circumstances, this is just as much a part of preparing for the new school year as packing a school bag or getting the school uniform ready,” the city office stated.

President Volodymyr Zelensky marked the opening of the academic year with a school visit that took place in a basement shelter rather than a classroom, interrupted mid-encounter by yet another air alarm. Boys in pressed button-down shirts and girls with traditional ribbons woven into their hair gathered around him, visibly excited despite the concrete overhead.

“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.

As the conflict grinds into its fifth school year, the human cost surfaces in enrollment arithmetic. UNICEF estimates that more than 1.8 million Ukrainian children now live abroad, while countless additional families have been displaced within the country’s borders. The result is a growing number of empty seats in classrooms that, for many, are already below ground.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where are Ukrainian schools holding classes during air-raid alerts? Many schools in Kyiv and other front-line cities now keep pupils in basement shelters for the full duration of each alert rather than interrupting lessons and evacuating. The Ukrainian Global School in Kyiv adopted this approach for the 2025–2026 academic year.

How many air-raid alerts did Kyiv experience in the week before the new school term? Between midnight on Thursday and noon on Tuesday, sirens sounded sixty times across the city, totaling roughly forty-seven hours of continuous warning.

What changed in Russia’s drone campaign that made daytime strikes possible? Russian factories began mass-producing a new generation of jet-powered drones roughly three times faster than earlier Shahed models. Their speed makes interception far harder, allowing Moscow to attack continuously rather than in overnight waves.

How many Ukrainian children are displaced abroad? UNICEF estimates more than 1.8 million Ukrainian children currently live outside the country, with additional families displaced internally.