The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned this Wednesday that around 66% of the classes taught in Ukraine are affected by air-raid alerts resulting from the Russian invasion, which means that thousands of children cannot follow the school curriculum normally in approximately two out of every three school days.
Between September and October, around 65.9% of school days were disrupted by these alarms, well above the 37.4% recorded in the same interval the previous year, which represents a “disruption of school days amid an attack scale”.
“The consequences of these attacks are also felt in classrooms across the country,” UNICEF said in a statement, in which it details that, since the start of the school year, students have spent an average of 34 hours under air-raid alarms during class hours.
According to data compiled up to October 20, this time accounts for more than 13% of the planned instructional hours. In addition, it has been found that the average duration of alarms during school hours has nearly doubled between September 2025 and September 2026. In Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, alerts during classes have risen from 12 in September 2025 to 71 in September 2026.
In the regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovogrado and Kharkiv, students have had to endure more than 60 hours of alarms during the school day, which is equivalent to about a quarter of the scheduled instructional time. This reality affects more than 560,000 boys and girls.
Since the start of the large-scale war, the United Nations has confirmed nearly 2,000 attacks on educational centers and infrastructure, of which around 270 have occurred only in 2026. In light of this situation, the organization continues to work with the Ukrainian Government and its partners to “ensure that boys and girls can learn in safe conditions, by improving school shelters, restoring learning, and supporting mental health”.
“It is essential to protect children from attacks: all boys and girls have the right to learn in a safe environment,” UNICEF emphasized.