Studying in two shifts, patrols to prevent children from attending a Ukrainian school online, and a "basement" [torture chamber] for parents whose children attend a Ukrainian school. In the occupied territories, these are possible scenarios for children who are trying to acquire Ukrainian education in addition to the mandatory Russian. Some children tried to find a way round and were even ready to forge their parents’ signatures in order to get into a Ukrainian school, sometimes the whole grade announced that they were studying online in Ukraine, and some children could not withstand the threats and chose the school program of the occupation authorities.
Ukrainian schools, which found themselves under occupation after the beginning of the full-scale invasion, continue to work online. They have fewer students, but children still attend them. Families are developing routes for children to leave the occupied territories in order to pass the Ukrainian National Multi-Subject Test and enter Ukrainian universities.
The Ukrainian education under occupation means that children scattered around the world attend virtual classrooms. In the occupied territories, some pages in the textbooks are glued up to hide the Ukrainian coats of arms. In this article, "Suspilne" tells about education during the war.
"The Ukrainian language had been taught until 2020 and was abolished then. At that time, they [Russians] were already preparing for the annexation"
"For as long as I can remember, I always knew that I would study in Kyiv," says 17-year-old Maria. This is not her real name, and there will be no details in the text that could reveal her identity. Maria is from the occupied part of Donetsk region. All her conscious life, she has been hiding her pro-Ukrainian stance and the fact that she studied at two schools — in the occupation and outside it.
We are sitting in one of Kyiv co-working spaces, and it is clear that Maria feels nervous. She has passed through 10 years of life behind the demarcation line, propaganda lessons at a local school, trips to pass the Ukrainian National Multi-Subject Test, and hours of terrifying waiting at checkpoints in Donetsk region. Maria barely has enough courage to talk about the upcoming meeting with new classmates.
"It always seems to me that I will meet here people who work for the FSB. That they will try to earn my trust, and will then transfer me [to Russia]," she says.
The war started when Maria was six. She had just finished the first grade. The girl remembers this period in fragments: she went with her mother and sister to the already occupied Crimea to wait until the hostilities are over. Once they called dad to say that they were going to come back soon, to which they received a short answer "no". The forced vacation in Crimea continued in Zaporizhzhia. She attended the second grade there for about a month.
"At my school [in Donetsk region], the second grade started on October 1. There were few classmates — maybe fifteen of the 33 children remained. But we were happy when someone returned,” she recalls. “And we had the Ukrainian language! Until the eighth grade, that is, until 2020. A 90-minute lesson once a fortnight, compulsory for everyone, not optional. Then they abolished it — I do not remember how they explained it, but it seems that they were already preparing for the annexation."
Ukrainian textbooks did not disappear from school libraries immediately. It was only in the fifth grade that Maria first received books approved by the Russian Ministry of Education. Until that moment, the schoolchildren were simply ordered to glue up pages with the Ukrainian coat of arms and the national anthem. "If the pages were not glued, they used to say: “Glue up, quickly!"
Maria shows fragments from Russian textbooks in her phone. One of them was written by Vladimir Medinsky, the former Minister of Culture of Russia, who currently heads the "Commission for Historical Enlightenment". It tells about a "coup d'état" [in Ukraine], Russophobia, "rewriting history", and "Ukrainian punitive squads".
"How did you manage to critically assess all this?" I asked her.
"Parents," Maria replies. "I accepted everything they said because they are my family. Then I began to see how the Russian [occupation] authorities work. And I understood — it is all true."
After the seventh grade, Maria started to attend one more school. Her parents enrolled her in online learning at the nearest school in the Ukraine-controlled territory. Then it was in the town of Volnovakha. Every day, video recordings of lessons with additional materials and homework — mostly in the written form — were given to the class.
Maria’s family also visited Volnovakha for shopping, as the prices in the occupied territory were higher. However, with the beginning of the full-scale war, the city was occupied and destroyed by the Russians. Since then, the girl’s family began to go to Rostov region for shopping. Maria transferred to another distance learning Ukrainian school.
"I studied asynchronously. It means that I attended online classes when I could. Once a fortnight, there was an online consultation in each subject: on Thursday — in Ukrainian, on Monday — in Physics, and so on. Those who attended classes could have bonuses and more attention from teachers. The teachers were good," the girl says. "At the end, we passed tests. I passed everything a month before the end [of studies]. This year, I did all the tasks in a week."
Maria admits that she does not like online education, and she finished a Ukrainian school in order to enter a university. However, she says that she still feels lack of education, because the school in Donetsk region also switched to online learning with the beginning of the full-scale war.
"For us, everything [the escalation of hostilities before the beginning of the full-scale invasion] started a little earlier. February 18-19 — sirens, evacuation, constant strikes [on Ukraine] with "Grad", "Uragan" [multiple launch rocket systems] — everything. I was in the ninth grade. We had a break from school for a month, and then they announced distance learning, but there were no online lessons, and the exams at the end of the year were canceled," the girl recalls.
She says that after the ninth grade she just stopped studying and started preparing for admission to Kyiv [university]. During the occupation, Maria consistently attended only Social Studies classes — at that time she had already chosen the field of sociology, so she tried to pick up everything that could be useful in the future. The girl recalls other lessons with indignation:
"Let’s take Russian literature. There is a lot about war in it. I do not understand why they did not adjust the program for these territories [where active hostilities were taking place]. All my classmates have war trauma; it is difficult for everyone. However, no one takes into account that it can traumatize again. The school psychologist did not talk about the war either. There were several general meetings, "Let’s talk about career guidance..." However, they never taught how to deal with the consequences of the war."
At the beginning of the spring of 2024, Maria and her parents were choosing where to take the Ukrainian National Multi-Subject Test abroad. They were looking for the easiest option: going to the place for four days was not suitable; going through Belarus with interrogations there was not an option either. They decided on Azerbaijan. Those few months were difficult for the girl; she was nervous and was afraid for her family. She, as a minor, had a chance to escape interrogations, but the risk was much higher for her parents. However, in the end, they managed to leave. The legend about the vacation worked, and the border guards were only interested in where they got the money for the trip.
"How much did it cost?" I asked.
"Honestly, I do not know," says Maria. "However, I know that the way from Donetsk region to Kyiv costs USD 250 per person."
USD 250 for Maria to move to Kyiv. Another USD 500 for her parents who brought her to the capital. The same money for them to return to the occupied territory.
Now Maria will study offline for the first time in three years. She smiles that she will finally have a normal, full-fledged study. She will not pay for the education as she managed to get a budget-financed place according to the so-called "Quota-2" for applicants from the occupied territories. "Quota-1", on the other hand, is designed for orphans, persons with disabilities, participants in hostilities, and victims during the Revolution of Dignity. Only two budget-financed places were allocated for sociology under "Quota-2" program and the multi-subject test points allowed admission through the general competition procedure.
Finally, I ask if any of her classmates from Donetsk region were going to enter universities in the Ukraine-controlled territories. Maria looks intently into my eyes and remains silent.
"Nobody at all?" I ask her again.
"Nobody at all," she confirms. "I remember that at the Social Studies lesson the teacher asked who was planning to move after graduation. Almost everyone raised their hands. She said, "I am upset! Who will rebuild our region?" That is, people already realized that they would have no future there. And they had to escape."
"According to the occupation laws, I can be sentenced with false accusation of mining my own school"
After the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Olha, the director of one of the schools in the currently occupied territory of Zaporizhzhia region, did not see the future life in her hometown either. Her planning horizon in those days was limited by the inevitable arrival of the Russian military to the school that she had headed for four years. From that moment, there was only one way — to go as far as possible from the native city.
Olha is not a real name. She has many reasons to hide her identity, in particularly, because of her colleagues in the occupied territory who already know what it is like to be in the "basement" [torture chamber].
"According to their [occupiers’] laws, I have to be imprisoned for preparing a terrorist attack. They took away from the school all the furniture and equipment that had been bought within the "New Ukrainian School" program. And the reason was that I allegedly mined everything," she smiles.
Today, Olha heads a distance learning school for students from the occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia region. The facility works both for children who still live under occupation and for those who have gone abroad or to the Ukraine-controlled territory. She also has a second job in a communal institution that unites people from her area.
"There are various consultations there, a civil registration office, a tax office. And there is an educational hub, which I have been managing for a year and a half," the woman explains. "There are groups for children from our city and district. Free of charge. I teach English, this is my specialty. Friday and Saturday are my office days. Children’s days."
Olha has been in education for 28 years. During this time, she worked in two schools in her hometown, rose from the position of a teacher to a director. However, with the beginning of the full-scale war and the rapid occupation of the city, her responsibilities expanded. She had to organize shelters for women and children, to be on duty so that no one entered the school, to negotiate with occupiers when armed Russians were standing behind her. In the end, she had to take all the blame from the occupiers to protect the colleagues.
"When you are a manager, you make decisions for the benefit of the whole staff if it does not endanger the family. It was more difficult for me to make the decision to go on the first day than to stay. If I had left, I would have blamed myself for not doing what I could. Yes, there are no irreplaceable people, but in that situation, I realized that I had to be there, in my place. As long as there was no physical threat to my family, my duty was to be there," she says.
The threat became real in the mid-March 2022, when "guests" (that is how Olha calls the Russians) came to the school for the first time. They were civilians and military, and they came to negotiate the operation of the school according to new standards. The first time they allegedly came for a map of the roads of Zaporizhzhia region. The director brought them to the library, tore out a map of Ukraine from the geographical atlas and pointed at the contours of the region, "Here we are, take it. Together with the flag of Ukraine, the coat of arms and a portrait of Shevchenko."
"Didn’t they take it as an audacity?" I ask.
"No, they did not. It was a kind of reconnaissance. They walked inside, saw that it was really a school and there were no military personnel there. They were professional Russian military, strong men," she recalls.
For the second time, a civilian came, "Sergey from Moscow". He came with a Yakut in the military camouflage and with an assault rifle. He began to ask how much money was needed to launch a school under the Russian control. To the director’s counter-question what will happen to her if the school does not open, "Sergey from Moscow" answered, "You can sell the apartment at an acceptable price and leave this city." That was the end of the conversation.
A week later, Olha received a phone call from an unknown number and was invited to the meeting of the directors of local schools. The meeting had to be in the Department of Education, which at that time was already managed by a protégé of the occupiers. Earlier, that woman was the head of one of the educational institutions of the captured city. However, Olha did not go there, realizing that she had little time left until they would come to punish her for resistance:
"I had a secretary who kept repeating, "Olha, you cannot leave [the city] yet." After that, she said, "Olha, you have to go now."
The director wrote a resignation letter. She ordered her colleagues to take the letter to the Department of Education when the woman was no longer in the city. She asked [the colleagues] to blame her for everything that could cause displeasure of the occupiers. She left a note on her parents’ door, "We can leave at any moment. You will not even know when." The night before leaving, she was afraid of every noise. However, in the end, she left with her husband, children and dog. They passed 11 checkpoints where the driver negotiated with the occupiers for money and cigarettes with the invented legend of a child who urgently needed to go to the hospital.
The neighbors later said that "guests" came to the director’s apartment in the morning. Before that, there were already cases in the city when educators were kidnapped just from their homes. The doors were broken, a bag was put on the head and they were sent "to the basement". In Olha’s case, they [Russians] started loud knocking on the door. The neighbors from another apartment said, "Don’t knock. There is no one there, everyone has left."
From her hometown, the woman and her family went to Zaporizhzhia, then to Kyiv region, and finally to the capital. Olha has recently received two job offers, but she says that as long as the school is not closed legally, she cannot leave it.
The director explains that in 2022, all educational institutions of the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia region legally moved to the regional center. In the same year, her school resumed work, but now it works combining the teaching efforts with another school of the occupied city. The number of children decreases every school year, and according to Olha, the number of her students has halved. The reasons are different. In the Ukraine-controlled territories, some parents send their children to local educational institutions. In the occupied territory, the students of junior grades are unable to complete two shifts of education, not to mention the fact that the occupiers persecute the students of Ukrainian schools.
On September 1, the Telegram channel of the "Yellow Ribbon" movement, which organizes resistance in the territories captured by the Russians, posted information about checks on families with children: "They are checking where and how they study. They are checking parents’ phones. They are looking for applications through which people can study online. They are all prohibited."
Olha also confirms the information about the checks, "Raids usually take place after lunch [when the second shift of studying is in progress]. The security guards with weapons come from house to house and check gadgets to see what children are doing after classes," she says. In the first year [of the full-scale war], there was a story when the teacher asked the class who of them was studying in a Ukrainian school. Everyone stood up. They believed the whole class could not be punished. However, in a year, there was a story when a father of one of the students was taken "to the basement" "for a conversation" as they say. After that, the parents started writing to us, "We love you very much, but we cannot leave [the occupied territory], and, unfortunately, we will not communicate anymore."
However, there were other cases. For example, a boy from the occupied territory entered a Ukrainian school secretly from his parents.
"Aren’t parents supposed to write an application for admission?" I asked in surprise.
"They are. But children who have access to the documents can write — albeit illegally — such an application on their own," the director tells. "They attach a birth certificate, a passport (if they already have one), a passport of one of the parents, and a document from the previous educational institution [achievement certificate or report card]."
There is another successful case in Olha’s career. Her school was the first local institution to introduce a Ukrainian studies component for children studying abroad. In this format, students study a smaller number of subjects in Ukrainian schools: language and literature, history (6 hours per week), and additionally, for senior classes — law, geography and defense of Ukraine (8 hours per week).
"We will launch a pilot "Dream" project this year, we are among the pilot 40 schools," the director notes. This project should help children, parents, and teachers navigate the educational process more effectively, in particular, thanks to a library of content and information about educational programs, extracurricular activities, Olympiads, clubs, etc.
Despite all the achievements, the director is still worried about the future of her school. It is about Order No. 850 of the Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Oksen Lisovyi, which, among other things, regulates that children with the status of an internally relocated person can join distance learning only on the condition that at the place of current registration the schools are either closed or have no vacancies .
"For us [educators], this was a serious blow," says Olha. "It turns out that the academic freedom exists only on paper, all these orders cancel it."
After several weeks of discussion of the order, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine issued an explanation: they say that it has not been approved yet, exists only as a project, and the team of the ministry sent it for approval, in particular, to the regional departments of education. However, there are no details in the explanation about getting education at the place of temporary registration. At the beginning of the new school year, the order has not yet entered into force.
"In reality, we are the hostages of this situation," adds the director. "On the one hand, we cannot promise parents that we will work next year. On the other hand, we have started this school year and will see what happens next."