Ukrainian schoolchildren marked the beginning of the country’s fifth wartime academic year on September 1 amid growing threats to the civilian population as Russia escalates the bombardment of Ukrainian cities. In Kyiv, thousands of children returned to the classroom after the summer break following yet another night of Russian airstrikes that killed at least 12 people and injured dozens more.
Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukraine’s cities have intensified in recent weeks, with daytime attacks becoming far more frequent and civilian casualties climbing alarmingly. The Kremlin’s current strategy focuses on relentless air raids throughout the day, with the goal of disrupting every aspect of daily life including schooling. Due to heightened security concerns, many Ukrainian schools chose to begin the new academic year with whole classes studying remotely.
For years, educators and policymakers have worked to make Ukrainian schools as safe as possible and preserve some sense of normalcy for children. Forced underground for safety, more shelters have been built, schedules adjusted, and programs launched to address the challenges of teaching during wartime. But as Russian attacks intensify and daytime bombing increases, earlier measures are no longer enough. Just days into the new school year, Ukraine’s Education Ministry was already reviewing how schools should operate, with officials noting that the security situation had “changed fundamentally.”
Stay updated
As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.
Videos recorded in Ukraine on September 1 showed traditional ceremonies to mark the beginning of the new school year interrupted by air raid sirens, with students and teachers forced to take shelter underground. Some children, like six-year-old first grader Robert in Kyiv, spent their first day at school learning underground during back-to-back air raids.
As officials grapple with policy decisions and safety protocols, Ukrainian teachers are facing classroom challenges far beyond those of a typical educator. In addition to keeping children on track academically, teachers must also try to give them as normal a school experience as possible.
Ukrainian teachers Mariia and Oleksandr Ryzhenko are fellows with the educational NGO Teach For Ukraine. They teach in the Poltava region of central Ukraine and have experienced mounting security challenges since the start of the current academic year. “Around 75 percent of all our lessons this week have taken place in the shelter,” they noted in early September.
One prolonged air raid alert kept them underground with their students for the entire school day. As the seven-hour alert stretched on, the children “grew exhausted and found it increasingly difficult to concentrate.” For the Ryzhenkos, the most troubling part is that sirens, explosions, and rushing down to the basement are becoming part of everyday life for the current generation of young Ukrainians.
Their experience reflects a much broader reality. Liudmyla Lompas, co-founder and interim CEO of Teach For Ukraine, said that more and more teachers and children are starting the school year in underground shelters rather than classrooms. “Every third child in Ukraine is studying online or in hybrid format,” she says.
Eurasia Center events
It is impossible to measure the full impact that Russia’s attacks are having on Ukrainian children. But the damage to the country’s education system is not simply a byproduct of Russia’s broader campaign against Ukrainian civilians. Russia is also targeting the institutions and materials that allow Ukrainian children to learn.
Since 2022, Russia has damaged 4,650 educational facilities in Ukraine, with 423 completely destroyed. Ukraine’s publishing industry has also increasingly come under attack, with over ten million books destroyed this summer, including more than 620,000 school textbooks.
In Russian-occupied Ukraine, the Kremlin’s weaponization of education is even more sinister and effects at least 1.6 million Ukrainian children. The Ukrainian government’s Center for Countering Disinformation describes Russia’s approach as a systematic effort combining the suppression of Ukrainian national identity with the indoctrination and militarization of children. According to a May 2026 OSCE report, the Russian Federation “treats education as an instrument of state security and identity transformation.”
Russia’s cynical approach to education is not confined to occupied regions of Ukraine. Domestically, the Kremlin is increasingly turning schools into fertile ground for nationalistic indoctrination and military recruitment. The country’s revamped curriculum includes basic military training, while children are exposed to military equipment, weapons instruction, and wartime propaganda.
The contrasting realities facing Ukrainian and Russian schoolchildren were immediately apparent on September 1. While Ukrainian ceremonies marking the start of the new academic year were interrupted by air raids and security alerts, the mood in Russia was more militaristic. At one school, a Russian soldier was invited to highlight the importance of military training. “If you want the whole world to speak Russian, study how a Kalashnikov works,” he told the assembled children.
The new school year has begun amid a sharp increase in Russian attacks on the Ukrainian civilian population. This is causing irreparable harm to millions of Ukrainian schoolchildren and revealing uncomfortable truths about Russia’s strategy. As we try to understand whether Moscow is serious about negotiations and ready for a durable peace, Russia’s attempts to terrorize schoolchildren across Ukraine and to indoctrinate those living under occupation speak volumes about the Kremlin’s true intentions.
Ukrainian children should not be subjected to another school year of lessons interrupted by air raid alarms and time spent in underground shelters because the risk of remaining in the classroom is too high. As Mariia and Oleksandr Ryzhenko put it, Ukrainian children are incredibly strong, but they are still children. “They need peace and the right to a safe childhood, not a life spent running to the basement at the sound of yet another siren and constantly wondering where the next strike will land.”
Shelby Magid is the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and the board chair of Teach for Ukraine.
Further reading
The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.
The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values, and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia, and Central Asia in the East.
Follow us on social media
and support our work
Image: Students sit at desks in a classroom in a fallout shelter at a lyceum in the Slobidskyi district on Knowledge Day, which marks the start of the new academic year, Kharkiv, Ukraine, September 1, 2026. The shelter was renovated by Acted, a French NGO, with financial support from the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. It has been equipped with seven classrooms, a resource room, and a medical office, and will serve 720 children from three secondary schools, with lessons held in two shifts. On Sundays, preschoolers due to enter first grade next year will also study in the shelter. In the new academic year, 24 safe educational locations will operate in Kharkiv for mixed learning: 10 underground schools, seven metro stations, and seven fallout shelters at academic institutions. Photo by Viacheslav Madiievskyi/Ukrinform via REUTERS