The UN Children’s Fund said on Tuesday that Ukraine has sustained almost 2,000 attacks on education since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, including some 270 this year. The statement came a day after a strike on a school being used to distribute aid.

The attacks and air raid alarms have cut into classroom time, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said. In three regions, school-time alarms amount to approximately one quarter of scheduled learning hours and affect more than 560,000 children.

Since the start of the academic year, children have experienced an average of 34 hours of air raid alarms during school time, equal to more than 13% of scheduled learning through Oct. 20, UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said. Some regions have been affected by more than 60 hours of alerts, he said.

In Kyiv, air raid alarms increased from 12 in September 2025 to 71 in September 2026, UN News reported. In the Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovohrad and Kharkiv regions, children have experienced more than 60 hours of school-time alarms.

The United Nations’ top aid official in Ukraine condemned Monday’s attack on a school and shelter in Komyshuvakha, in the Zaporizhzhia region. UN News said the strike was reported to have killed at least 29 civilians.

Most of the victims were residents who came to get aid at a local school and employees of the local administration, said Matthias Schmale, resident and humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine. Subsequent strikes at the same location killed two rescuers and four police staff who responded to the first attack, he said, and nearly 50 people are still missing.

Pires shared an account from Katia, a 15-year-old in the Mykolaiv region. “I’ve just returned to in-person school; however, we still spend most of our school day in a shelter because of air raids,” she said.

Pires said the war’s mental health toll on Ukrainian children remains visible. He recalled a visit a month ago in which young people said they learn underground because it is not safe above ground, and older students described anxiety and difficulty concentrating.

Maysa Jabout, head of the UN global fund Education Cannot Wait, said the impact of war on children has forced the fund to prioritize psychosocial counselling. She said that shift uses money needed for teaching and learning so children can cope with studying in very difficult circumstances.