For millions of Ukrainian children, the childhood universe of family, home and school changed brutally, in a way that was difficult to process at an early age, when on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The wave of refugees abroad that was triggered by the military attack, made up mostly of women and children, still faces all kinds of challenges in the host countries today, two years later.

Although as the war lengthened and the front stabilized, thousands of people decided to return to Ukraine, the foreign contingent continues to be very high. According to UN data, there are currently 6 million Ukrainian refugees in Europe, of which between 1.8 and 3 million are children. Not all national statistics relied on by the UN specify the ages of Ukrainian refugees, so these are estimates. Limiting the number to the European Union (EU), today there are 4 million Ukrainians welcomed in community countries, of which 1.3 million are school-age minors.

“Many of these children live in perpetual uncertainty. In their short lives they have witnessed a global pandemic, a violent invasion of their country, and a trip to a new country. “They have been separated from their families, they have had to learn a new language, understand a new culture and make new friends, without knowing at the same time how long this precarious chapter will last,” said the then director of the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union (FRA), Michael O’Flaherty, .

Among such daily challenges, children struggle with the double effort of attending school in the host country in another language and following online classes in Ukrainian with the syllabus of their country, according to the system organized by the Ministry of Education of Ukraine . “It is common practice now in all countries where there are Ukrainian children; It is a great challenge for students to attend two schools at the same time,” says Oksana Potelchak, a Ukrainian refugee who works as a teacher at the German-Scandinavian School in Berlin.

Potelchak, now 37 years old, arrived in Berlin with two young children at the end of February 2022, in the first days after the start of the Russian invasion. A little more than two months later, on May 1, she found employment at this school – which was looking for Ukrainian teachers for the newly arrived children – since she speaks German and English, and she had worked as a teacher and interpreter in Ukraine. Since then, Potelchak teaches German to two groups of children, divided into primary and secondary, who then follow the Ukrainian online classes as a family, for which there are exercises and exams, and which lead to an official Ukrainian diploma.

“Most of them now speak German quite well, and follow the subjects. But double schooling is one of the biggest challenges, and the children try to do it, because they don’t know what is going to happen in one or two years, if they are going to stay in Germany because it is impossible to return home, or if they are going to get return, so classes in Ukrainian are like a hope and a connection with our country,” says Potelchak. His hope of returning remains, he assures: “They think about returning, they dream about it. In every topic we talk about, in every task, even when it is an essay in German, they write about Ukraine, about their hometowns, about their families, about their home.”

In Germany, the bulk of Ukrainian children are in school, but this is not the case in all European countries. According to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, in the 2022-2023 academic year only half of the children went to school in the host country. The causes include: lack of information about educational options, administrative and language barriers, mothers’ doubts about enrolling them because they hope to return to Ukraine soon, and concerns about reintegration into the Ukrainian educational system. Another problem is the lack of capacity in schools to accept new students.

Oksana Potelchak, whose two children are now 10 and 5 years old, co-founded a network of Ukrainian teachers in Germany with her compatriots, a story she recounted at a meeting of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS). Her husband is in Ukraine in the army, and she wants to contribute from here to training Ukrainian children for the future of the country.