In Ukraine’s Kharkiv, 20,000 children go underground to study

Subway schools provide safety as Russian assaults have killed dozens of children in Ukraine’s second-largest city.

Kharkiv, Ukraine – Maksym Trystapshon takes the subway to work. But the school head teacher and English teacher from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city that sits only 40km (25 miles) from the Russian border, does not need to leave the subway station to see his students.

His school is right inside the Oleksandr Maselsky station on Kharkiv’s southeastern outskirts, a stone’s throw away from roaring trains and hurrying commuters.

It used to be a draughty hallway on the way out of the station that closed down three decades ago. Now, it is a small “metroschool” with flimsy white plastic doors that let in and out almost 2,000 schoolchildren and preschoolers who study in four cramped classrooms in shifts seven days a week.

“You don’t have to think about the war, it’s a safe place, and you only think about teaching children, not the problems that surround us,” Trystapshon, bespectacled and burly, told Al Jazeera minutes before three dozen third-graders stormed into his classroom.

“Safety” is the mantra even the youngest students repeat here.