UNICEF said Ukraine has sustained almost 2,000 attacks on education since 2022

Ukraine has sustained almost 2,000 attacks on education since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, with some 270 this year alone, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday, according to UN News.

That strike hit a school and shelter in Komyshuvakha, in the Zaporizhzhia region. Matthias Schmale, the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine, condemned the attack, which reportedly killed at least 29 civilians. He said most of the victims were residents who had come to get aid at the school, along with employees of the local administration. He also said later strikes at the same location killed two rescuers and four police staff who responded to the first attack. Nearly 50 people are still missing, he noted.

UNICEF also described the effect of air raid alerts on schooling. UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said that since the start of the academic year, children have experienced an average of 34 hours of air raid alarms during school time, equivalent to more than 13 percent of scheduled learning. That figure runs up to 20 October, and some regions have been affected by 60-plus hours of alerts.

The totals differ sharply by place. In Kyiv, air raid alarms rose from 12 in September 2025 to 71 in September 2026. In the Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovohrad and Kharkiv regions, children have experienced more than 60 hours of school-time alarms. That is approximately one quarter of scheduled learning hours and affects more than 560,000 children.

Pires shared the account of Katia, a 15-year-old from the Mykolaiv region. She told UNICEF she has returned to in-person school but still spends most of the school day in a shelter because of air raids.

Pires also spoke of a visit a month ago, when he met young people who learn underground because it is not safe for them above ground. He reiterated the visible mental health toll the war has on Ukrainian children. Even in classroom bunkers, he said, children deal with alarms constantly. Some of them, especially the older ones, expressed a lot of anxiety and told his team they could not fully concentrate.

Maysa Jabout, head of the UN global fund Education Cannot Wait, said the huge impact of war on children everywhere has forced the fund to prioritize psychosocial counseling. She said that takes essential money away from teaching and learning, which the fund needs to help children cope with learning in very difficult circumstances.