In a profound and innovative response to the exigency of war, the northeastern city of Kharkiv, in Ukraine, will soon break ground on an unprecedented construction project – the country’s first underground school. This revelation was made by Mayor Ihor Terekhov, who articulated that this subterranean refuge would safeguard the continuity of education for thousands of children amidst the ominous threat of missile attacks.
The adversity of rocket assaults is an unfortunate yet frequent reality for the Kharkiv region, with the most recent one marring the peace of Monday. The vicious fervour of these drifts of aggression since the commencement of the generational geopolitical fallout with Russia in 2022, has vandalized more than 360 educational infrastructures and inflicted various degrees of damage on over 3,000 others, as reported by Ukraine. The dire circumstances have displaced two-thirds of Ukrainian schoolchildren from in-person learning, due to constant and deadly Russian missile and drone attacks and shelling.
Consequently, the labyrinth of underground metro stations and other makeshift shelters have been transformed into makeshift classrooms. Unfortunately, these refuges often lack the warmth of proper heating. Reinforcing the gravity of the situation, the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency stated last week that integrating children who have been displaced by the Ukraine war has proven challenging for schools across the 27-member bloc.
Addressing the crisis on social media, Mayor Terekhov declared his plans to construct Ukraine’s premier underground school in Kharkiv. He assured that the project would adhere to the most advanced standards for defensive structures and importantly confirm that neither this nor the following year would see any decrement in the city’s education budget despite fiscal strain. However, there was no mention of when this fort of learning would open its doors, nor how many pupils would be accommodated.
A little insight into this extraordinary phenomenon of adaption, the past month witnessed more than 1,000 Kharkiv pupils welcoming their new academic year inside five underground stations metamorphosed into ‘metro-schools’. The students are divided into two shifts and transported to school by buses. Police and rescue personnel maintain a vigilant presence to ensure safety, an unthinkable scenario, as expressed by the Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, who posed the rhetorical question – “Could you ever imagine that Ukrainian children will study in the underground?”
This scenario is the reality that engulfs Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, located just 30km from Russia. The city has been ruthlessly subjected to bombings in the initial weeks of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, which commenced in February 2022. These relentless attacks have had devastating implications on the city’s inhabitants, including fierce street fights. A lightning Ukrainian counter-offensive eventually forced a retreat of the Russian troops during the autumn of that tumultuous year.
The disruption caused by the war is painfully evident in the lives of Kharkiv’s student population, who continue to trudge through the debris of war-torn streets and buildings once reminiscent of a peaceful life. But resiliently, the defiant school graduates celebrated and danced amid the ruins, a symbol of their unwavering spirit and optimism amidst the ruins.
