For the Future of Ukraine

Two small houses wrapped in red corrugated iron stand between meter-high pine trees in the middle of the sandy ground behind the Nowoseliwka school building. They are the entrance to the school's shelter. If there wasn't a war against Ukraine, they wouldn't be here. Because if Russia wasn't at war with Ukraine, the children at the school wouldn't have to take shelter during air raids.

Behind bars, a staircase leads underground. The children's voices get louder with every step. Schools in Ukraine must be able to accommodate all pupils in shelters in the event of danger. If this is not possible, they have to teach the children online.

Principal Anna Pentowa walks ahead over the concrete thresholds and points to the ventilation system and the heavy door. By Ukrainian standards, the municipality has invested a lot of money in the cellars. But in the end, there was no money for furniture. Teaching was out of the question. Helvetas stepped in with $7,700 after the school applied for support.

Danger, even far from the capital

We are in a suburb of Poltava, a city almost 300 kilometers east of Kyiv. Sirens wail in the street as soon as the car door closes behind me at Poltava railroad station on the drive to the school in Nowoseliwka. “Attention! Air alert!” The need for shelters, even here in this Ukrainian province, becomes clear right at the start of my visit.

In the summer of 2024, a rocket hit less than two kilometers from the school. 193 children go to school here — from kindergarten to A-levels. They are lucky. Every fifth school in Ukraine has had to close because they don't have a shelter.

Childhood in times of war

“I'll be 15 years old in just three months,” Nastja Oposchnjan tells me. When I ask her how she is doing in the shelter, she says, “I feel safe here. It's horrible that children also die in war.” Jewhenija, or Schenja for short, sits on her knees. She goes to kindergarten. While Nastja can still remember a time without Russian missiles, kindergarten children like Schenja don't know an everyday life without war.

“The little ones like to come to us when we're sitting down here,” explains the youngster, wrapping her arms protectively around Schenja. Every time the air raid alarm goes off, the children leave the classrooms in the school building to seek shelter in the newly built underground rooms next to the school. Sometimes it happens three times a week. There the children share one large and one small room.

Artur, a ninth grader like her, sits next to Nastja. Wrapped up in a thick, black winter jacket, he writes intently in his exercise book. It is thanks to the help of Helvetas that Artur is able to write sitting on a bench at a table and not huddled on the concrete floor.

Only when he lifts his head do I notice that he is cross-eyed and cannot open and close his right hand; his fingers are bent inwards, slightly twisted on the table. I introduce myself briefly and explain why I'm here. Artur nods and talks about the first days of the war of aggression: “I was very scared at the beginning.”

He has infantile cerebral palsy, his mother, Tetjana Lubimowska, explains to me later at home at the kitchen table. “He probably didn't get enough oxygen during birth.” For Artur, the same routine is very important. The interruptions to lessons caused by the air alarm are a big challenge for him.

Nevertheless, it is particularly important for him, the older of her two sons, to be able to attend lessons on site. “He needs socialization so that he learns to express his feelings. Online lessons mean that he speaks into a computer or tablet. It's not the same.”

While Artur's disability means he needs to be able to learn onsite, for other children it is their parents' limited financial means that make face-to-face lessons urgently necessary. One of these children is eight-year-old Wadim Shevchenko. “I don't have a laptop or tablet at home,” he says. “My mother was recently given a second-hand cell phone by a relative, but it doesn't work very well, either.”

Artur and Wadim are children who benefit more than average from the shelter and regular lessons in a classroom. But every single child benefits from interacting with their peers. It is impossible to learn social skills via software; it requires direct interpersonal contact. If lessons take place exclusively online, there are no breaks, no lunch in the school canteen, no commute to school and no direct interaction with teachers.

Years lost

For half a decade now, learning for children in Ukraine has only been possible under difficult circumstances and with interruptions. First there was the coronavirus pandemic, then came the major Russian invasion for children in Ukraine. The consequences are constantly increasing differences between the children, explains Tetjana Senenko, a teacher from Wadim: “The parents have a huge influence on how much the children learn without lessons on site. I have children in Year 2 who take four times as long to read a text as others.”

According to United Nations figures from summer 2024, around 600,000 children in Ukraine still have no access to regular lessons and are instead being taught online. The negative impact of the war on children's education can be documented with figures. In October of the first year of the war, 15-year-old pupils in Ukraine were already two years behind their peers in reading, one year behind in arithmetic and half a year behind in science, according to the PISA study. The gap is likely to have widened in the meantime.

Difficulty learning

Teacher Tetjana Senenko tries to give her schoolchildren from Year 1 to Year 3 as much as possible to learn. She leans over Wadim to help with the tasks. The shelter is “normal,” he tells me. The only thing the second grader struggles with is concentration; it is sometimes very loud.

His brow furrowed, he turns back to his math problems. The walls of the shelter echo, and with several classes of all ages in one room at the same time, the noise level is correspondingly high. I am impressed by how Wadim and Artur try to concentrate on their lessons despite the circumstances. Artur's mother is convinced that the 15-year-old would have lost touch long ago if he hadn't been able to attend face-to-face lessons.

Poltava is not the focus of international aid in Ukraine. This makes the help provided by Helvetas all the more welcome. “When the furniture was delivered and we all helped to unload it, I was very surprised by the good quality and the beautiful colors,” says Artur's mother Tetjana. Sometimes the children in the Poltava region sit in the bomb shelter for hours until the all-clear is given. The air-raid alert lasts almost two and a half hours on the morning I visit the school.

War determines everyday life

There is no cellar in the Artur’s family home, and certainly no shelter. Tetjana and her husband realized a lifelong dream by building their own house three years before the outbreak of the war of aggression. “None of us thought back then that we would ever need a cellar,” explains Tetjana. “I used to have a calendar on the fridge where I always wrote down what I was going to do and when.” Today, the calendar is empty. The unpredictability of their own lives and the uncertainty of how long this war will last is what worries the adults the most.

Wladislaw, the younger of her sons, chases after his football outside the house. “The children are everything to me. I can't imagine life without them. It's so important for me as a mother to know that my children are safe in the basement.” Ten-year-old Wladislaw can still remember exactly how a missile roared over his head. “It flew so low that I could read the number on it.”

Tetjana shakes her head. “We used to teach children at school what distinguishes a tractor from a harvesting machine. Today, children can tell the difference between different types of missiles. It's just complete madness.”

In the first days of the Russian war of aggression, Russian soldiers advanced up to 80 kilometers north of Nowoseliwka into Ukrainian territory. Today, the front line is 180 kilometers northeast of the village. However, the Russian missiles and drones are a threat in all regions of Ukraine. In the meantime, the father of the family has also returned home from work. He has not yet been drafted into the army, so at least Tetjana and her two sons are spared this worry for the time being.

Indirect support for women

In the third year of the war, the Ukrainian army has 1.3 million soldiers. Men make up the majority and women are often left at home with their children. For the mothers whose partners are fighting in the war, the fear of losing the father of their children is part of everyday life. Helvetas' help in setting up shelters gives them a little breathing space in the midst of their powerlessness.

Marina Kikot sits next to me on a green and purple floor puzzle that absorbs the cold of the ground. The little ones can also play comfortably on it in the shelter. These mats, too, were financed with help from Switzerland. We are in Dikanka. The village is part of Ukraine's national heritage. One of Ukraine's most famous writers, Nikolai Gogol, once celebrated his literary breakthrough with stories entitled “Evenings in the hamlet near Dikanka.”

Unfortunately, 200 years later, the reality of life in Dikanka is not characterized by idyllic village life, as in Gogol's story, but by the Russian war of aggression. Marina's three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Oleksandra, plays with a small toy dog and building blocks in the air raid shelter. “When the war broke out, my daughter was just seven months old,” says Marina. The girl's father has been serving in the Ukrainian army since 2015. “Many men are at the front and the women are working, so the shelter is very important both for safety and for making a living.”

The 33-year-old brushes a strand of her long black hair out of her face with her hand: “It's also about mental health. Instead of sitting at home alone with our own problems, we can go to work and do something useful.” Fear for her husband's life has been a constant companion since the outbreak of war on February 24, 2022. “This constant stress affects the lives of Ukrainians. It's impossible to say who is affected more and who less. I think that all children will be traumatized. The children who live in Ukraine now as well as the children who have left Ukraine.”

Marina has decided to stay in Ukraine, despite the circumstances. The support from Switzerland cannot take away all the fears, but with this help, people can try to find their own way through everyday life.

About the Author

Luzia Tschirky is a journalist, author, podcaster and expert on Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. She was reporting in Kyiv when Russia attacked Ukraine and then continued to report from Ukraine for SRF.