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In an air-raid shelter, Ukrainian schoolchildren learn how to behave during a siren alarm
Photo:
Dominika Zarzycka / dpa
In the middle of the Russian war of aggression, a new school year has started for several hundred thousand schoolchildren in Ukraine.
"Today is September 1st - your day, an important day for all of us, the day of knowledge," with these words President Volodymyr Zelenskyj addressed the children and young people in the country on Thursday in a video message.
The start of school this year is different from the previous ones because of the state of war.
"Some are far from home - in other regions of Ukraine, others in other countries," said the President.
Face-to-face teaching in Ukraine is currently only permitted under one specific condition: there must be an air-raid shelter.
The Ministry of Education had made this requirement due to the ongoing Russian invasion, which began at the end of February.
Only around a quarter of the schools started regular classes
According to the ministry, only about 27 percent of 12,906 schools in the Ukrainian-controlled areas have resumed regular classes.
Another almost 42 percent only teach via the Internet, the rest in a mixed form.
In the eastern and southern Ukrainian regions near the front, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia and Mykolaiv, most of the teaching was switched to online.
272 educational institutions have been completely destroyed and 2,164 damaged since February.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, more than 326,000 students are being taught in more than 1,400 schools in the Russian-occupied territories.
According to media reports, the language of instruction and Russian curricula were switched to Russian.
In Ukraine and other ex-Soviet republics, schools and universities traditionally start a new school year or semester on September 1st.
fok/dpa