Every tenth school in Ukraine suffered from the war

The Russian-Ukrainian war continues, and our cities and villages are being destroyed. Among other things, the enemy destroys schools, kindergartens, and higher educational institutions. According to the government portal https://saveschools.in.ua/en/, 3,798 educational institutions were damaged by bombing and shelling, and 365 of them were completely destroyed. In the T4P coalition database, we record damage and destruction of scientific and educational institutions and other illegal education-related actions. We present you with an overview of the information we have collected.

General statistical information

As of mid-April, the KHPG coalition database contained 2,204 episodes relating to scientific and educational institutions.

The general statistics show that the most significant number of episodes were recorded in the front-line regions. Moreover, in populated areas where fierce fighting takes place, the situation with educational institutions can, without exaggeration, be called catastrophic.

Educational institutions

The most significant number of destructions and damages recorded in the T4P database concerns schools. We are talking about at least 1253 episodes. Considering that there are currently 12,604 secondary education institutions operating in Ukraine, it can be argued that the enemy damaged every tenth Ukrainian school.

In some cities where active hostilities took place, almost all schools were destroyed. In one of the previous publications, we indicated that 83% of schools in Mariupol were damaged.

Another example is the occupied city of Bakhmut, whose population was more than 70 thousand at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. According to the Unified State Electronic Database on Education, there were 13 schools in Bakhmut. As of today, the T4P Coalition database records at least nine school facilities destroyed or significantly damaged.

For example, this is what multidisciplinary lyceum No. 11 looks like. This educational institution is the oldest in the city, built in 1911 during the Russian Empire times.

The historical building of another Bakhmut educational institution, the Bakhmut School of Arts, was also destroyed. It operated in buildings built in 1896 and 1912.

Thus, it can be stated that almost all educational institutions have been lost in Bakhmut, and even after the potential de-occupation of the city, significant resources and time will be required to restore at least some of the destroyed buildings. Considering that residential buildings in the city have also been significantly damaged, the city’s population is unlikely to return to pre-war levels, further complicating the restoration of educational institutions.

On the night of 16 October 2022, the Russian military launched a missile attack on one of the schools in the Huliaipole territorial community of the Zaporizhzhia region. The blast wave blew out almost all the windows, façade and roof. The staff managed to save some of the furniture and the library. It is important that the school was the only institution in the entire village; more than a hundred children from the locality studied there.

In the summer of 2022, the Russian military attacked a support school in the Esman community of the Sumy Region. As you can see in the photo, the establishment received significant damage.

On 2 January 2024, as a result of another shelling of Kharkiv from S-300 missile systems, school No. 35, which is located in the Osnovianskyi district of the city, was destroyed.

In Regions far from the front, educational institutions were damaged or destroyed by missile and drone attacks.

During the 6 July 2023 missile attack on Lviv, two children’s communal institutions were damaged — an orphanage and a sanatorium school. According to preliminary estimates, the amount of damage reaches hundreds of thousands of hryvnia.

The blast wave from a missile strike by Russian troops on one of the villages in the Rivne Region damaged the local lyceum.

Although the situation with educational institutions in Regions far from the front seems less problematic, journalists drew attention to the fact that it took quite a long time to restore an academic institution in one of the Western communities. We are talking about a school in Velykyi Zholudsk, in the Rivne Region. It was damaged by Russian UAV debris in the early days of the full-scale Russian invasion. As noted, the school has not been completely repaired over nine months, although the institution’s employees managed to eliminate some of the consequences.

Kindergartens

The database contains at least 300 episodes involving damage to preschool educational institutions.

In February of this year, as a result of the bombing of the village of New York in the Donetsk Region with FAB-500 aerial bombs, a kindergarten was destroyed.

On 24 May 2023, the Russian military hit a kindergarten in the Yunakivska community of the Sumy Region with a controlled aerial bomb. According to the establishment’s director, the building cannot be restored.

Institutions of higher education

In the T4P database, destruction or damage to higher education institutions occurs at least 154 times.

In Mykolaiev, the Black Sea National University, named after Petro Mohyla, was repeatedly targeted by the Russian military. As a result of the attack on 19 August 2022, two missiles destroyed the central part of the building.

On 25 March 2024, the Russian military launched a missile attack on Kyiv. The Kyiv State Academy of Decorative and Applied Arts and Design, named after Mykhailo Boichuk, was damaged. Part of the building was destroyed.

The situation with higher education institutions in regions where active hostilities are taking place or in those that have come under occupation is also quite difficult.

Although, unlike schools and kindergartens, universities can relocate to other, safer regions, it is unlikely that the relocated universities will be fully operational.

According to representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, although institutions are being relocated, we are experiencing something other than the work of universities at the pre-war level. Oleh Sharov, Director General of the Directorate of Professional and Higher Education, answering a question about the losses of relocated universities, noted: “Of course, their losses are critical. We have now moved 44 higher education institutions out of 300. This is a lot. Although, if we take the number of students, it is relatively small. This is because our higher education institutions in Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipro were not moved. These remained in place.” According to him, about 7-8% of students study in the relocated institutions.

Other objects related to education

For this publication, we include libraries, children’s creativity centers, sports complexes, and research institutions in this category.

At least 20 records in the T4P database involve corrupted libraries.

For example, on 30 October 2023, the Kherson Regional Universal Scientific Library, named after Oles Honchar, was damaged by shelling.

During the assault on the city of Lyman in 2022, Russian troops partially destroyed a modern bicycle complex, which opened in the fall of 2021. The then head of the Donetsk OVA, Pavlo Kyrylenko, reported this.

According to the governor, the Lyman bicycle complex with a specialized Bicycle Moto eXtreme track is the only one in Ukraine. It was supposed to host international and national competitions.

During the occupation of the Kharkiv Region in 2022, the Russian military plundered and damaged the unique radio astronomy observatory named after S.Ya. Braude.

According to Oleksandr Konovalenko, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and deputy Director for Scientific Work of the Radio Astronomy Institute, 90% of the infrastructure was destroyed and stolen, and the damage reached hundreds of millions of dollars.

Not just shelling

There are known cases of educational institutions in the occupied territories where the Russian military did not destroy them. However, the occupation administration actively confiscated Ukrainian books and destroyed educational and fiction literature.

At the beginning of January 2024, the so-called Ministry of Education of the “Luhansk People’s Republic” ordered “unacceptable” all literature and visual aids written in Ukrainian and confiscating such books from all educational institutions in the Luhansk Region.

The mayor of Enerhodar also reported on the confiscation of Ukrainian literature in 2022. His message discussed the destruction of Ukrainian literature in libraries and the confiscation of school history textbooks.

It is safe to say such actions are a confirmation of Russia’s policy of eradicating the Ukrainian language in the occupied territories and introducing an education system that includes teaching exclusively the “Russian version of history.”

Legal qualifications

The Rome Statute provides for liability for deliberately directing attacks on buildings intended for religious, educational, artistic, scientific, or charitable purposes, historical monuments, hospitals, and places of concentration of the sick and wounded, provided that they are not military targets (paragraph XX. Art. 8 RS)

Consequently, to qualify the destruction (damage) of an educational institution under a particular article, two requirements must be met:

1. The attack must be intentionally directed against the educational institution. This means that the military man deliberately strikes and understands that the results of his actions will cause damage to a specific building intended for academic needs;
2. Such an establishment should not be a military object. Sometimes, the military uses the buildings of schools and educational institutions for its own purposes. In this case, a strike on an academic institution’s territory cannot qualify as a war crime.