Kyiv, Ukraine –
As she lay buried beneath the rubble, her legs broken and her blood blinded by thick clouds of dust, Ina Levchenko could only hear screams. It was 12:15 pm on March 3 and a few minutes earlier an explosion shattered the school where she had taught for 30 years.
Amid the relentless bombing, she opened School 21 in Chernihiv as a shelter for frightened families. They wrote the word “children” in large, bold letters on the windows, hoping that Russian forces would see it and spare them. However, the bombs fell.
Although she still didn’t know, the 70 children she had ordered sheltered in the basement would survive the blast. But at least nine people, including one of her students – a 13-year-old boy – would not.
“Why schools? I can’t understand their motivation, “she said. “It is painful to realize how many of my friends died колко and how many children left without parents were traumatized. They will remember it for a lifetime and pass on their stories to the next generation. “
The Ukrainian government claims that Russia shelled more than 1,000 schools, destroying 95. On May 8, a bomb destroyed a school in Zaporizhia, which, like school No. 21 in Chernihiv, was used as a shelter. There were fears that about 60 people had died.
Deliberately attacking schools and other civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Experts say the large-scale remains could be used as evidence of Russia’s intentions and to disprove claims that the schools are simply collateral damage.
But the destruction of hundreds of schools is more than the demolition of buildings and the mutilation of bodies, according to experts, teachers and others who survived the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Syria and beyond. This hampers the nation’s ability to recover from the cessation of hostilities, hurting generations and shattering the country’s hopes for the future.
In the nearly three months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the Associated Press and the PBS Frontline series have independently inspected 57 schools that have been destroyed or damaged in a way that indicates a possible war crime. Accounting is probably only a small fraction of the potential war crimes committed during the conflict, and the list is updated daily.
In Chernihiv alone, the city council said only seven of the city’s 35 schools were unharmed. Three were turned into ruins.
The International Criminal Court, prosecutors from around the world and the Prosecutor General of Ukraine are investigating more than 8,000 reports of potential war crimes in Ukraine, involving 500 suspects. Many have been accused of deliberately targeting civilian structures such as hospitals, shelters and residential areas.
Turning to schools – spaces designed as shelters for children to grow up, learn and make friends – is particularly damaging, turning childhood architecture into something violent and dangerous: a place that inspires fear.
Geography teacher Elena Kudrik lay dead on the floor of School 50 in the eastern Ukrainian town of Gorlovka. Among the remains around her were books and papers stained with blood. In the corner, another lifeless body – Elena Ivanova, the assistant director – slumped in the office chair, gaping at a wound torn from the side.
“This is a tragedy for us … This is a tragedy for the children,” said school principal Sergei Booth, who stood in front of the brick building shortly after the attack. Pieces of broken glass and rubble were scattered on the concrete, where once smiling children flew kites and posed for photos with friends.
A few kilometers away, in the Sonechko preschool in the town of Okhtyrka, a cluster bomb destroyed a kindergarten, killing a child. In front of the entrance, two more bodies lay in puddles of blood.
Valentina Grusha has been teaching in the Kiev province, where she has been working for 35 years, most recently as a district administrator and lecturer in foreign literature. Russian troops invade her village of Ivankov just as school authorities begin preparations for war. On February 24, Russian forces traveling to Kyiv shot dead a child and his father there, she said.
“There was no more education,” she said. “We called all the leaders and stopped training because the war started. And then there was 36 days of occupation. “
They also shelled and destroyed schools in many nearby villages, she said. Kindergarten buildings were smashed by shrapnel and machine gun fire.
Despite widespread damage and the destruction of educational infrastructure, war crimes experts say it is difficult to prove the attacking army’s intention to target individual schools. Russian officials have denied attacking civilian structures, and local media in Russia’s Gorlovka have claimed that Ukrainian forces trying to reclaim the area are to blame for the blast that killed two teachers.
But the consequences of the destruction are undeniable.
“When I started talking to the directors of destroyed and robbed institutions, they were very worried, crying, talking with pain and regret,” Grusha said. “It’s part of their lives. And now the school is a ruin that stands in the center of the village and reminds of those terrible air raids and bombings. “
UNICEF Communications Director Toby Fricker, who is currently in Ukraine, agreed. “School is often the heart of the community in many places, and it’s so important in everyday life.”
Teachers and students who have experienced other conflicts say the destruction of schools in their countries has damaged an entire generation.
Syrian teacher Abdulkafi Alhamdo is still thinking about children’s blood-soaked drawings strewn on the floor of a school in Aleppo. He was attacked there during the Civil War in 2014. Teachers and children were preparing for an art exhibition with student works depicting life during the war.
The blast killed 19 people, including at least 10 children, the AP reported at the time. But the survivors remain in Alhamdo’s memory.
“I realized in (their) eyes that they would not go to school again,” he said. “It doesn’t just affect the children who ran away, with shock and trauma. This affects all children who have heard of the massacre. How can they go back to school? You are not just focused on school, you are focused on generation. ”
Jasminko Halilovic was only 6 years old when Sarajevo, in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, was besieged. Now, 30 years after the end of the war in Bosnia, he and his peers are still collecting the pieces.
Halilovich went to school in the basement, as many Ukrainian children did. Desperate for safety, teachers and students moved from basement to basement, propping up chairs on chairs instead of hanging them on walls.
Halilovic, now 34, founded the Museum of Military Childhood, which catalogs the stories and objects of children in conflict around the world. He worked in Ukraine with children displaced by Russia’s 2014 invasion of the Donbass region when the current war broke out. He had to evacuate his staff and leave the country.
“Once the battle is over, a new battle will begin. To rebuild cities. To rebuild schools and infrastructure and to rebuild society. And to heal. And it is the most difficult to treat yourself, “he said.
Alhamdo said he saw firsthand how the trauma of the war affected the development of children growing up in Aleppo. Instilling fear, anger and hopelessness is part of the enemy’s strategy, he said. Some withdrew, he said, while others were violent.
“When they see their school destroyed, do you know how many dreams have been destroyed?” Do you think anyone would believe in peace, love and beauty when the place that taught them these things is destroyed? he said.
Alhamdo stays in Aleppo and teaches children in basements, apartments where he can, for nearly 10 years. Continuing to teach despite the war, he said, was an act of disobedience.
“I’m not fighting on the front line,” he said. “I’m struggling with my children.”
After the attack on School 50 in Gorlovka, shattered windows shattered classrooms and corridors and the street outside. The floors were covered in dust and debris: cracked beams on the ceiling, drywall, a TV that fell off the wall. A mobile phone is on the desk next to where one of the teachers was killed.
In Ukraine, some schools that still exist have become makeshift shelters for people whose homes have been destroyed by shelling and mortar fire.
What often complicates the prosecution of war crimes for attacks on civilian buildings is that large facilities such as schools are sometimes diverted to military use during war. If a civilian building is used for military purposes, it is a legitimate target during war, said David Bosco, a professor of international relations at Indiana University whose research focuses on war crimes and the International Criminal Court.
The key for prosecutors then will be to show that the Russians have targeted schools and other civilian buildings across the country as a coherent military strategy, Bosco said.
“The more you can show a model, the stronger the argument that this is indeed a policy of non-discrimination between military and civilian facilities,” Bosco said. “Schools are (a place) where children need to feel safe, a second home. Apparently breaking this and essentially attacking the next generation. This is very real. It has a huge impact. ”
As the war continues, more than half of Ukraine’s children have been displaced.
In Kharkov, which has been subjected to relentless shelling, children’s drawings have been pasted on the walls of an underground metro station that has become not only a family home but also a makeshift school. Primary school children gather around a history table and …
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