The children and teachers gathered on the grass outside School No 1 in Borodianka on Thursday morning for the first day of the academic year. There were speeches and a recital of the Ukrainian national anthem, and as is traditional the girls wore white scrunchies in their hair, the boys white shirts. They brought flowers to give to their teachers.
But there will be no lessons in the classrooms of School No 1 this year. Borodianka, a town just north of Kyiv, was occupied by Russian forces in March. The invading soldiers used the school as a base and then trashed it as they left.
