At this point in the summer, children are preparing to go back to school, some with more enthusiasm than others. But not in Ukraine. The war with Russia has left a trail of schools destroyed by bombing, which makes it impossible for the little ones to return to that relative “normality”. In some classrooms, no trace of desks. In others, not even the walls that separated the classroom from the hallway are still standing.
Now, among the rubble, some Ukrainian children return to collect school supplies. The new course begins, but they are already living the third consecutive year of online classes; they splice a global pandemic with a war with the neighboring country.
As Emilio Morenatti says, “one more collateral effect of a war, absurd like all, which in this case materializes in the vulnerable.”
The renowned Spanish photographer has also spoken with parents and teachers. “Everyone tells me that we need to visualize this drama: thousands of children out of school because of the war,” he says. The children want to return: “It is one thing to do an online class knowing that you have a school and another thing is to do it because you know that you no longer have a school.”
When we call him, he is in Bucha. He has attended the funeral of a soldier who died in Donbass, he says, “a great guy who is considered a hero here.” What Morenatti captures this time, however, is not the mature face of war, but the faces of the children who no longer play in the yard. He portrays each one of them in the corner where they used to sit: “I didn’t tell them how they had to dress; they just stayed there.”
Their testimonies are devastating. “At first, after she was bombed, I was afraid to come to school,” Sofia Zhyr, 14, told the photographer. “I watched her from afar for a long time. Then, it seemed like nothing had happened.” In the image, the girl sits at her old desk, among the remains of a classroom of a school in Chernihiv that Russian forces bombed on March 3. The same day that of Oleksandr Morhunov (13 years old) and Sofia also fell Klyshnia (12) “When I’m in my class now, I just think about how much I want this war to end,” the boy confessed.
A day later, it was the turn of Anna Skiban’s school (12), and Oleksii Lytvyn’s. Mykola Kravchenko (12) thinks of the person who died in the rubble. Ivan Hubenko (11) feels resentment towards those who turned that place into ruins. Karina Muzyka (10 years old) lives near her school. When she was bombed, her windows blew out and her chandelier nearly fell on top of her. “I felt very scared,” she remembers.
Khrystyna Ignatova (16 years old) looks outside. “I miss my friends, my school, my teachers, but there will be a new school and new friends and teachers. The most important thing is that life goes on.”
They are the small protagonists of Morenatti’s latest photographic report, a small sample that captures a much larger reality:
