The children exploring their new classroom in a village outside Kharkiv can barely remember the last time they had face-to-face lessons.
Covid lockdowns kept them out of school for two years; Russian bombs have done the same for a further two.
Their education has suffered and they have missed their friends as they slogged away at solitary online schooling.
Their isolation should end and classes resume in the coming months, but it will be with a wartime twist: they will be in an underground bunker.
Authorities in the bombarded Ukrainian region of Kharkiv are trying to move schools underground, by building hundreds of classroom shelters so teaching can resume, protected from the Russian onslaught.
Classes are due to be rolled out from September, but already schools are holding catch-up lessons in preparation.
“When they have been coming back for the first time, they hug each other and hug their teachers,” says Svetlana, the school’s director, as pupils arrive for a holiday class in their new underground classroom.
“You can feel that they were missing everything.”
Underground schools are one precaution Kharkiv is making as it shifts normal life to a prolonged war footing, for a conflict that may drag on for years more.
Ukraine’s second city is a hostage to its location. It is only 19 miles from the Russian border and a regime that has attacked it repeatedly.
Twice Putin’s forces have invaded the Kharkiv region, once at the start of the war, and again a month ago. More than 200,000 have fled their homes. Towns like Vovchansk have been destroyed and the region has been battered by missiles, drones and bombs.
Kharkiv cannot be moved, so somehow daily life and local governance must adapt to the predicament of living with such a neighbour.
“This neighbour [Russia] will not suddenly disappear,” says Larisa, a teacher at the school, who declined to give her full name.
“We need to be ready at any time with projects like this shelter to protect ourselves.”
Schools have not been spared in the invasion. In total, some 30 per cent of Kharkiv region’s educational institutions have already been damaged in the fighting.
Missiles just 40 seconds away
Kharkiv is so close to the Russian border that the flight time of a devastating S-300 missile from the Russian city of Belgorod is estimated to be only 40 seconds.
That is too little time to warn residents, or schoolchildren. By the time the city’s air raid sirens go off, any incoming missile has already struck.
Olga Bespalova, director of education in the Kharkiv region, said: “The main issue is we need to build a chain of shelters in the Kharkiv region to restore the education process.
“The necessity is to have children in shelters already. We need to organise the study process underground, because obviously they don’t have enough time to go to a shelter.”
More than 300 school shelters have already been prepared. Some are new, some are refurbished and some adapted from basem*nts. For classes to resume across the board, another 1,200 are needed.
“We want to create normal life for children,” says Oleh Syniehubov, the region’s governor.
“That’s why we are creating new schools underground and kindergartens, so children can study not only online.”
Vital to the life of the region
Education is not the only priority to give the city a semblance of normal life, he says.
Keeping businesses up-and-running in difficult circ*mstances is vital to the life of the region, and to Ukraine’s finances.
Mr Syniehubov said he had recently spent a lot of time trying to persuade a major supermarket chain not to quit the region.
Faced with air raids, patchy electricity and the threat of further invasion, investors and businessmen are understandably wary.
He said: “We are persuading them to stay because it’s a big part of keeping our economic situation healthy.”
Cheap lines of credit and insurance will help, he says. Better security is the top priority. Officials believe the threat from S-300/400 missiles has lessened in the past week after strikes across the border with Himars rocket launchers, but all say the city needs more air defences.
Power plants destroyed
Electricity is another worry. All of Kharkiv region’s power plants have been destroyed and, nationwide, the Russian onslaught on Ukraine’s power generation and grid is taking its toll.
Black-outs for power rationing
The country had extensive black-outs last week to ration power.
“We are catastrophically short of electricity for our needs,” said Serhii Kovalenko, chief executive of the Ukrainian private electricity distributor Yasno.
Both residents and businesses are hard hit.
“The situation is very difficult, because we have a huge lack of power,” says Ihor Terekhov, the city’s mayor.
Deadly strikes, such as one on a shopping centre late last month which killed at least 18, have worried the city’s inhabitants, he admitted.
Yet while some have left, many remain. The city is subdued, but far from deserted. Many shops and restaurants are open.
Mr Terekhov said: “We don’t have any panic in the city. We have some pressure, maybe some worries with the people. We have a clear confidence in our military in what they are doing and this is our daily job: to work.”
Mr Terekhov was elected mayor only a few months before Russia’s 2022 invasion. At the time no one foresaw war, he said.
He said: “I had my own plans, ambitious plans, but unfortunately due to the war, we have had to postpone them all.”
A poignant sign
Across the city, in Kharkhiv’s No 18 cemetery, is another poignant sign of wartime reality.
Hundreds of recent graves in the military section are adorned with national flags and brigade insignia. By a rough count there are around 1,200 such graves and there are new funerals each day.
Only a handful of relatives and friends could grieve over the open coffin of a soldier called Vladimir last week, after he was killed serving with the 110th Territorial Defence Brigade on the Kupiansk front.
Vladimir’s home was in Luhansk, in Russian-occupied territory over the 620-mile front line which runs across Ukraine like a scar.
He could not be buried at home and his Luhansk relatives could not cross the front to attend.
Mr Terekhov said: “Our main task is to ensure that these lives were not paid for nothing.”
The Russians can return
Despite the apparent slowing of the most recent offensive, residents are aware the Russians can come back.
Mr Terekhov: “They will only not be able to return when we have victory. During war there is always some possibility that they can return.
“We need to have a really good understanding of that. The war is ongoing and we need to be prepared.”
Teachers at the school with the new underground classroom hope that however proud they are of the facility, it is only temporary.
Svetlana says: “We are dreaming of our victory and of peace. Children can’t continue their education underground.”
