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At first look, it’s a wasteland. A barren plot of earth in a metropolis caught up in among the most vicious preventing between Russia and Ukraine.
As missiles, drones and “glide bombs” terrorise the residents of Zaporizhzhia close to the jap entrance, it doesn’t appear potential that any semblance of regular life can keep it up.
But, seven metres underground, the bottom has been hollowed out to create a completely fledged college for 1,000 pupils. With solely discrete entrances and a air flow unit above floor, college students rotate via the bolstered bunker day by day.
The college, which has been open little greater than per week, lies in one of many few components of the southeastern area of Zaporizhzhia that has not been occupied by the Kremlin’s forces for the reason that first days of Russian chief Vladimir Putin’s full-blown invasion in February 2022.
As a part of the unique onslaught, the Russians seized Europe’s largest nuclear energy plant and Putin exploited the power, full of Russian troopers and tanks, as nuclear blackmail – his terrifying sword of Damocles hanging over the continent.
As 2025 started, the Zaporizhzhia area confronted a brutal uptick in Moscow’s assaults. The eponymous capital has witnessed Russian ballistic missile strikes on town. Yet its inhabitants stay unbowed and decided by no means to give up.
Shops and companies stay open alongside its bustling avenues and Zaporizhzhia is a vital industrial hub, producing metal, aluminium and different metals.
As evening falls on the brief winter days, lights sparkle alongside the seven miles of Sobornyi Prospekt, one in every of Europe’s longest streets.
But the peaceable scene is illusory. On only one evening over the previous month, Moscow launched 400 air and floor assaults towards Ukrainian navy positions and inhabitants centres within the area, in line with its governor, Ivan Fedorov.
Aerial assaults towards town, concentrating on principally civilian websites, produce common tragedies. One Russian glide-bomb assault on 8 January killed 13 civilians and injured some 30.
The new college, headteacher Valentyna Yerashova tells me, is taking its pupils and its identify from an present college, the Zaporizhzhia Sich Collegium, judged too weak to Russian assaults. The new construction is designed to face up to standard and nuclear assault.
“Only schools with air raid shelters have the right to operate,” she tells The Independent. “I want to believe that the war will end soon but, for now, this is the future of schools in Ukraine.”
Yerashova says her pupils can resume classes in a “real” setting, and importantly, will as soon as extra have the ability to mingle and socialise with different younger individuals.
Half the pupils, aged six to 18, might be taught in morning classes and the opposite 500 within the afternoon. In the occasion of an assault, 1,500 individuals can collect safely on the constructing which nonetheless smells of recent paint.
-Head-teacher-Valentyna-Yerashova-(l)-with-MP-Oleksandr-Vasiuk-at-the-new-underground-school-in-Za.jpeg)
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Headteacher Valentyna Yerashova, left, with MP Oleksandr Vasiuk on the new underground college in Zaporizhzhia (Askold Krushelnycky/The Independent)
“Even after this phase of the war ends, Russia will always be there and there can always be a threat. And here you can always use this space wisely – for school, for the playground, for everything.
“We are somewhat optimistic, we want to believe that it will definitely come in handy. We have to believe, have hope.
“Despite the terror the Russians try to inflict on Zaporizhzhia, we are gathering strength here, strength is in our land and strength is now education.”
With elevated assaults on town, Russian forces are edging westward in the direction of Zaporizhzhia as they attempt to bypass Pokrovsk in neighbouring Donetsk area, which Ukraine’s navy command says has, for months, seen the heaviest preventing alongside the 600 miles of frontlines.
Moscow has been determined to seize it for greater than a 12 months. But they’ve confronted fierce Ukrainian resistance and misplaced 1000’s of troops weekly. Now they might be attempting to envelop Pokrovsk fairly than assault head-on and a few battles rage solely 20 miles from Zaporizhzhia.
Having captured Enerhodar nuclear energy plant 50 miles southwest of town, the chance the Russians would precipitate a disaster that generated radioactive air pollution or perhaps a meltdown, terrifies Ukrainians nonetheless haunted by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident of their nation, the world’s largest civilian nuclear catastrophe.
Member of the Ukrainian parliament for Zaporizhzhia, Oleksandr Vasiuk, mentioned: “If the plant is damaged due to shelling or military actions, there could be a radioactive leak, leading to massive contamination in Ukraine and neighboring countries.
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Rescue workers at the site of Russian strike on a residential neighbourhood in Zaporizhzhia (AP)
“The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is located on the Dnipro River, a crucial water resource for Ukraine and several neighboring states. Radiation contamination of this river could affect not only Ukraine but also Russia, Belarus, Moldova, and other European countries.”
The Russians compelled Ukrainian scientists and engineers to maintain working the plant. Moscow finally allowed the UN and the International Atomic Energy Authority to examine the plant and its six reactors have been closed down.
But Moscow has ignored pleas by the worldwide consultants that every one navy forces vacate the power to scale back the danger of a disaster and the potential for catastrophe stays.
Periodically the Russians declare Ukrainian shells or drones have struck close by. The Ukrainians deny these allegations and say the Russians trigger the explosions themselves so as to maintain the perceived risk degree excessive.
Fedorov informed The Independent: “Of course we know that nobody can predict what the Russians will do and this is a great threat. We understand that when you have full control [of the nuclear facility] and when you want to kill as many citizens as possible, as Putin has tried to do these past three years, we know that this dangerous situation grows each day then nobody knows what we can expect.”
Aiding the struggle effort is crucial job, however for Fedorov protecting town as shut as potential to normality is one other key precedence.
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Zaporizhzhia area governor Ivan Fedorov within the underground college (Askold Krushelnycky/The Independent)
He says town’s inhabitants is between 750-800,000, the identical because the pre-war determine. “But the composition has changed because today every fifth resident of the city of Zaporizhzhia is an internally displaced person (IDPs or Ukrainian refugees) as the city became an evacuation hub since the full-scale invasion.”
Fedorov says that the longer the struggle continues the much less of those that fled overseas are more likely to return to Ukraine. He says individuals lengthy to return to their hometowns however that isn’t sufficient “because residents will not return to a wasteland.”
Rather than wait till the battle is over, he believes rebuilding the components of town which were destroyed by Russian assaults now’s important to encourage individuals again. He is proud {that a} quarter of the 1800 buildings broken by the Russians have already been restored.
But he’s sceptical about prospects for peace, regardless of discuss of a ceasefire negotiated by US President Donald Trump, and says Ukraine must be ready for the lengthy haul.
Member of parliament Vasiuk mentioned: “Our country and every Ukrainian deserve a just peace and I am sure that the international coalition will help achieve this. Most importantly, this must be a peace that guarantees Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security.
He said that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion Zaporizhzhia has become one of Ukraine’s key strategic centres – a hub for supporting hundreds of thousands of IDPs including with housing, food, and medical care.
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People clear the rubble inside St. Andrew’s Cathedral which was damaged by a Russian strike on Zaporizhzhia (AP)
It is also an important military bastion whose “successful defence is crucial for the stability of Ukraine’s southern regions and plays a decisive role both in the country’s economic and energy stability.”
During the three days The Independent visited Zaporizhzhia, air raid alarms sound periodically. Hours after talking to Fedorov and Vasiuk, Russian ballistic missiles struck targets lighting inflicting an enormous blaze that lit up the evening sky. Dozens of firemen fought a blaze at an industrial website and ambulances transported the injured from close by civilian residences.
Talking to police on the scene when Ukrainian anti-aircraft defences opened up on a wave of Russian “killer drones” flying above, one of many policemen says: “We’ve just been ordered out of here and to find a shelter. Please do the same.”
At 4am, the lodge sways as extra explosions rocked the identical space of town hit some six hours beforehand. Fedorov says one man was killed and 16 others together with a two-month-old child, injured. The assault was labelled a “double-tap” kind, intentionally designed to kill first responders, as firemen had been nonetheless tackling the preliminary blaze.
As curfew ends at 5am, individuals and visitors once more take to the streets in defiant willpower to proceed with “normality.”
For Vasiuk, it’s easy: “I was born and raised in Zaporizhzhia. This is not just a city. It is a heart that continues to beat even in wartime.”
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