To safeguard children, the city of Kharkiv in northern Ukraine—which has seen Russian soldiers shell it virtually every day—will construct a number of subterranean schools, according to announcements made by city officials on Wednesday.
Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, is only a few dozen kilometers from the Russian border. Since the invasion began in early 2022, Russian forces have rained artillery down on Kharkiv.
“After the first underground school project was successfully implemented in Ukraine, construction of three more such facilities has begun in Kharkiv,” city officials stated in a press release.
The first underground school in the city opened earlier this year, and Mayor Igor Terekhov announced that the city was devoting its own cash to help the new schools get off the ground as quickly as possible.
“Kharkiv needs modern air defence systems that will protect the sky, so that people can live in more or less normal conditions and so children can study in peace,” he stated in the statement.
The statement in Ukraine’s front-line towns and cities is consistent with a pattern.
This week, officials in the Donetsk area farther south said that they were building underground wards at a hospital in the town of Pokrovsk, which is around 25 kilometers away from Russian soldiers.
“Kharkiv needs modern air defence systems that will protect the sky, so that people can live in more or less normal conditions and so children can study in peace,” he stated in the statement.
The statement in Ukraine’s front-line towns and cities is consistent with a pattern.
This week, officials in the Donetsk area farther south said that they were building underground wards at a hospital in the town of Pokrovsk, which is around 25 kilometers away from Russian soldiers.
Recent weeks have seen the Kremlin’s soldiers advance more into the Donetsk region, and in May they unexpectedly began a ground offensive in Kharkiv.
A 36-year-old woman was arrested in Kharkiv, according to the Security Services of Ukraine, for giving Russian forces critical military intelligence.
According to the statement, she might spend eight years in jail.
