Kharkiv’s Metro School: Learning Underground
Ukrainecast
BBC
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2024
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Schools in one of Ukraine’s most dangerous cities have taken evasive action to escape frequent Russian missile strikes.
In Kharkiv they’ve opened up temporary classrooms in metro stations to keep children safe from attacks.
In this episode we hear from a teacher and a fifteen-year-old student about what school life is like underground.
Today’s episode is presented by Victoria Derbyshire and Vitaly Shevchenko. The producers were Nick Holland and Arsenii Sokolov. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. The series producer is Tim Walklate. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham. Email Ukrainecast@bbc.co.uk with your questions and comments. You can also send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram to +44 330 1239480
You can join the Ukrainecast discussion on Newscast’s Discord server here: tinyurl.com/ukrainecastdiscord
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.7 | Hello, it's 825 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. |
| 0:10.1 | And today we're going to bring you a slice of life in Haqiv where schools have had to move lessons underground, obviously to protect kids from Russian shelling. |
| 0:19.2 | So the children start their day not at the school gate, but by wandering down into the city's metro stations where temporary classrooms have been set up. |
| 0:27.5 | Kharkiv is of course Ukraine's second largest city. It's less than 40 kilometers or so away from the Russian border that's less than an |
| 0:35.9 | hours drive normally and that's what makes it such a prized target for Russian forces, the children of Harkivit's one of four Ukrainian cities that has an underground metro system, that's why they have classrooms underground. |
| 0:55.0 | But Russia has been targeting Kharki relentlessly for the past weeks, over the weekend on Saturday Russia used two glide bombs which are fairly |
| 1:07.5 | precise munitions to attack a DIY shop called epicicenter in Harkev, killing at least 18 people, more are missing. |
| 1:18.0 | And yeah, Saturday was a very busy day at that shopping centre and it was tragic. |
| 1:25.0 | Yeah and Russia always says it only targets military facilities. |
| 1:29.0 | One of the other targets hit in Harkey over the weekend was a print works and the BBC's international editor Jeremy Bowen was in the city. |
| 1:37.0 | So I've got inside the print works that was hit in the Russian attack. |
| 1:43.0 | There are firemen damping down the blaze in the great stacks of printed material that was in here. |
| 1:49.0 | The roof's gone, there's smoke. |
| 1:51.0 | It's hard to know why the Russians hit this place, but what is absolutely |
| 1:55.6 | certain is that the Ukrainians weren't able to stop them. Not one of the missiles was |
| 2:00.3 | intercepted. The war right now is about hard choices for Ukraine because they're |
| 2:05.4 | fighting an enemy that realizes their weaknesses and has worked out how to |
| 2:10.4 | exploit them. And obviously all that is the reason why schools in Harkiv have gone underground |
| 2:17.0 | and went underground several months ago. In this episode we're going to hear from a teacher, Anastasia and from a 15 year old schoolboy. |
| 2:26.7 | Yiho. |
| 2:27.7 | We can feel safe or we can communicate to each other and we can spend time in safe places. We don't have to react to air raid the ones or explosions. |
... |
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