Kyiv —
When children arrived at the Ukrainian Global School in Kyiv for the start of the new school year on Tuesday, they immediately headed to the basement.
In light of Russia’s near-constant attacks on the capital over the past few days, the school decided it could no longer bear students descending into the bunker every time the air raid siren sounded. Instead, you will be taking classes there.
“This is a big change,” the school told parents in a letter to mark the start of the new school year. “During an air raid siren, there is no need to run anywhere, suspend classes, or wait hours for learning to resume. Children are already in a safe location, and school can simply continue.”
In an attempt to lighten the mood given the difficult situation faced by students and their families, the letter highlighted the move as taking schools to a “whole new level”.
Just as Ukrainian families prepare for the start of the new school year, Russia is attacking Kiev in its longest and heaviest air raid on the capital to date.
Air raid sirens sounded 60 times in Kiev between midnight Thursday and noon Tuesday, lasting a total of about 47 hours, according to a CNN tally. At least 53 people were killed and more than 100 injured in Kyiv and the Kyiv region during this period, according to local authorities.
Russia has been bombing Ukrainian cities since the opening salvo of all-out war in February 2022, but its air terror campaign against Ukrainian civilians intensified early last year when Russia was able to mass-produce the Iranian-designed Shahid drone.
Moscow used to launch such large-scale attacks almost overnight, when it was easier to avoid Ukraine’s air defenses. But in recent months, it has been carrying out attacks day and night using a new generation of jet-powered drones. Three times faster than the original Shahed, these drones are nearly impossible for Ukraine to intercept.
Few Ukrainian children who returned to school Tuesday remembered what school was like before the war.
Just as the world was beginning to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This means that the children who entered eighth grade on Tuesday will be the youngest Ukrainians to experience regular, uninterrupted schooling. Students in fifth grade and below have never been to school during normal times.
Authorities in Kiev called on parents to prepare for the possibility that schools may be disrupted by an attack and urged them to teach their children what to do during a warning.
“In the current situation, this is as much a part of back-to-school preparation as packing school bags or preparing uniforms,” the Kyiv city office said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited a school in Kiev to mark the start of the new school year.
Dressed in their Sunday best, the boys in button-down shirts and the girls with traditional ribbons in their hair were excited to meet the president. This was despite the fact that the meeting was held in an evacuation center rather than a classroom because the alarm went off again.
“Right now there is an air raid siren. Unfortunately, the Russians are despicable… Even among enemies, there is usually an understanding that a child is a child,” Zelenskiy told reporters.
As the war stretches into its fifth year, the horrific toll on the community becomes increasingly apparent. According to UNICEF, more than 1.8 million children are currently living abroad, and many more are displaced within Ukraine, leading to more empty seats in classrooms across the country.
On Tuesday, schools across the country admitted about 243,398 first-graders, far fewer than the 400,000 who enrolled in 2021 before the war began, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Education.
Nadia Andrianova, whose 9-year-old daughter Aia started third grade on Tuesday, is among those who decided to move. She said she felt the situation had become unbearable any longer.
She said that in the spring of 2025 she noticed that the security situation in Kiev had significantly deteriorated, but decided to maintain the status quo.
“But last school year was much harder, especially at night. We always sleep underground (Kiev Metro) because it is the safest shelter available in our city. And spending nights underground has become very frequent. After spending such a night, it takes several days to recover and function normally,” she told CNN.
She gave up when Russian ballistic missile attacks became more frequent. “Every resident of Kiev knows that you don’t have time to find shelter. You can’t escape anywhere for those few minutes. It’s a matter of luck. So I decided to look for another city, another place to live.”
Aia started a new school in western Ukraine on Tuesday, a move she was initially strongly opposed to. “She didn’t want to go there[Kiev]because they had a great school and good teachers… She had been playing the piano for two years and had friends there and her best friend remained in Kiev, so of course she didn’t want to go,” Andrianova said, adding that Aia finally agreed to move after a particularly harrowing night in Kiev.
“We woke up to a terrible explosion and were sitting in the hallway of our apartment. We didn’t have time to run anywhere, so we just heard explosions every 20 seconds. And we agreed to leave Ukraine, to stay in Ukraine but move to a safer city.”
