Today we've got a story that begins in a kindergarten classroom in the city of

Kharkiv in Northeast Ukraine. It's got green and yellow walls. It's filled with

toys and books and before the war it was filled with children.

It was once a place where children played chess and grew flowers and they learned and they laughed.

Where 27 little six-year-olds started every day with a hug. And then in February of the year 2022,

Russia invaded Ukraine and everything for those six-year-olds changed.

I'm Rachel Martin and this is the Sunday story from up first.

And Piers Alissa Nabrini has spent eight months telling the story of what happened in the year

after that to the families in that kindergarten and their teacher. And she joins me now, hey Alissa.

Hi Rachel. I can't wait to hear this story. Let's start at the beginning. When did you first

visit this kindergarten classroom? Well it was August of last year and the empty school building

had been hit by Russian artillery. It's not clear if it was targeted but over the course of the war

about 3000 schools have been damaged across Ukraine. That's why they're online. And I did a

story for morning edition and actually you were hosting. Yeah I remember that. This was right before

a school the school year normally would have started in Ukraine right? That's exactly right. And it

was you know a good reminder of why the government had shut down the country's schools because of

the attack. So I was in Harkiv at the time and I heard about the school being hit. We decided to

go and see the damage. Here's a clip from the story that I filed.

Nearly all the windows are broken so glass is everywhere. The brightly colored stairs that

lead to the first classroom are destroyed. So hang on points to the top step which is stained

with blood. When the building was hit two teachers assistants happened to be taking out the trash.

They're both in the hospital. So that was Yana Sayenko. She's the head of the school and she was

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