As the Russians bombard the key Ukraine stronghold of Zaporizhzhia – this school offers hope underground
At first glance, it is a wasteland. A barren plot of earth in a city caught up in some of the most vicious fighting between Russia and Ukraine.
As missiles, drones and “glide bombs” terrorise the residents of Zaporizhzhia near the eastern front, it does not seem possible that any semblance of normal life can carry on.
But, seven metres underground, the earth has been hollowed out to create a fully fledged school for 1,000 pupils. With only discrete entrances and a ventilation unit above ground, students rotate through the reinforced bunker daily.
The school, which has been open little more than a week, lies in one of the few parts of the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia that has not been occupied by the Kremlin’s forces since the first days of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s full-blown invasion in February 2022.
As part of the original onslaught, the Russians seized Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and Putin exploited the facility, packed with Russian soldiers and tanks, as nuclear blackmail – his terrifying sword of Damocles hanging over the continent.
As 2025 began, the Zaporizhzhia region faced a brutal uptick in Moscow’s attacks. The eponymous capital has witnessed Russian ballistic missile strikes on the city. Yet its inhabitants remain unbowed and determined never to surrender.
Shops and businesses remain open along its bustling avenues and Zaporizhzhia is a crucial industrial hub, producing steel, aluminium and other metals.
As night falls on the short winter days, lights sparkle along the seven miles of Sobornyi Prospekt, one of Europe’s longest streets.
But the peaceful scene is illusory. On just one night over the past month, Moscow launched 400 air and ground attacks against Ukrainian military positions and population centres in the region, according to its governor, Ivan Fedorov.
Aerial attacks against the city, targeting mostly civilian sites, produce regular tragedies. One Russian glide-bomb attack on 8 January killed 13 civilians and injured some 30.
The new school, headteacher Valentyna Yerashova tells me, is taking its pupils and its name from an existing school, the Zaporizhzhia Sich Collegium, judged too vulnerable to Russian attacks. The new structure is designed to withstand conventional and nuclear attack.
“Only schools with air raid shelters have the right to operate,” she tells The Independent. “I want to believe that the war will end soon but, for now, this is the future of schools in Ukraine.”
Yerashova says her pupils can resume lessons in a “real” environment, and importantly, will once more be able to mingle and socialise with other young people.
Half the pupils, aged six to 18, will be taught in morning lessons and the other 500 in the afternoon. In the event of an attack, 1,500 people can gather safely at the building which still smells of fresh paint.
