Pechenihy, Ukraine—The classrooms are cold, the power is unreliable, and the sound of drones is a near-constant presence. For students in this village in the Kharkiv region, education has become a precarious undertaking, a testament to the enduring disruption of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
At the beginning of the war, Russian forces occupied settlements across the river from Pechenihy, forcing half the village’s population to flee. Those who remained lived under shelling for over six months, according to reporting from Foreign Policy. Oksana Drozdova, a Pechenihy resident, evacuated with her two sons to Schmallenberg, Germany, in March 2022, determined to maintain their connection to Ukraine through a rigorous schedule of German schooling supplemented by hours of Ukrainian language and history lessons each evening.
Drozdova’s experience reflects a broader crisis facing Ukraine’s next generation. Years of war have crippled the country’s educational system, leading to learning loss and social isolation for the 3.5 million students who remain in Ukraine, while approximately 1.6 million Ukrainian schoolchildren in Russian-occupied areas and nearly 1 million in the European Union are losing ties to their homeland.
A brief period of optimism emerged in the summer of 2023, when Ukrainian forces pushed back Russian troops from the immediate vicinity of Pechenihy and began renovating an underground shelter beneath the damaged school, offering a space for in-person classes. Drozdova returned with her sons in August 2023, taking a job teaching Ukrainian, English, and math at the school. By January 2025, students were attending classes in the renovated shelter.
That progress proved short-lived. In March 2025, three Russian drones struck the school, severing power lines and partially flooding the underground facilities, rendering the classrooms unusable. Repairing the damage is estimated to cost at least $1 million, a sum beyond the village’s means, according to Foreign Policy.
The attacks on Pechenihy’s school are part of a deliberate Russian campaign targeting Ukrainian infrastructure. According to the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War, the December 7, 2025, strike on the Pechenihy Reservoir Dam was another step in disrupting Ukrainian logistics in the Kharkiv region. The dam itself had faced continuous Russian attacks since at least December 7, 2025, utilizing Shahed drones, guided aerial bombs, missiles, and strike drones, according to a report from the 16th Army Corps of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Traffic across the dam was temporarily halted following the attack, as reported by the KyivPost.
With the school again unusable, students in Pechenihy now rely on a patchwork online curriculum hampered by frequent power outages. Dariia Pokhodenko, a Pechenihy resident with two school-age daughters, expressed her fear for her children’s safety, stating, “We are terribly afraid. We punish ourselves in our minds that children live here.”
The scale of the damage to Ukraine’s educational infrastructure is significant. Since the beginning of the war, Russian attacks have destroyed one in seven Ukrainian educational facilities, according to Anna Novosad, founder of the savED foundation, a Ukrainian educational NGO. This represents a “tactic of terror and disruption of any forms of regular life.”
The impact extends beyond physical damage. Olha Bihun, a psychologist working with children in the Kyiv region, warns that without support, children exposed to trauma will struggle with emotional intelligence as adults. Roman Hryshchuk, a member of the Ukrainian parliament on the education committee, highlighted the growing inequality within the Ukrainian education system, noting the disparity between students attending school in person, those studying online, and those in Russian-occupied territories receiving a Russian-language education.
In Bohdanivka, a village near Kyiv, the community has demonstrated resilience. Following the destruction of the local school by retreating Russian forces in April 2022, the village renovated a community hall and constructed a new modular facility with support from organizations like savED and the U.S. Agency for International Development. All 250 schoolchildren now attend in-person classes five days a week.
However, the situation remains precarious in villages like Pechenihy. Drozdova, who once believed she had found a safe haven for her sons, now questions her decision to return. “I came back here for the Ukrainian school,” she said. “But now I can’t even tell you why I’m still here.” Families are once again leaving Pechenihy, seeking safety elsewhere, according to Oleksandr Husarov, the head of the Pechenihy military administration.
The long-term consequences of these educational disruptions remain uncertain. Nadia Leshchyk, Ukraine’s educational ombudsman, notes that educational losses can affect a country’s GDP. The Ukrainian government has enrolled over 34,000 students in the occupied territories, but the true number is difficult to ascertain, and the situation for those students remains perilous. Teachers working in occupied territories face intimidation and threats from Russian authorities for providing Ukrainian education.
