Pushing past grief and fear, two Ukrainian teachers turned their school into a refuge

Svitlana Mukhina’s husband used to leave sweets for his grandchildren under the playpen in their house near Kyiv.

He is gone now – killed in action last October in the early stages of Russia’s bloody campaign to conquer Bakhmut.

But the candy still appears to the girls on a regular basis, as if Viktor is still alive. Mukhina’s grandchildren knew she was gone, but the treat kept an important memory alive for all of them.

“It still hurts a lot,” he said in a recent interview with CBC News.

Her husband’s death was a personal breaking point, Mukhina said.

The five- and seven-year-old granddaughters have their own rituals. Believing that the grandfather is watching from “heaven”, the eldest son reads the letters aloud, sitting by the window so that he can hear. He had promised to buy a tablet when he learned to read.

Mukhina, 56 years old – a teacher with brown hair, a strong face and (sometimes) a rough look – works in a primary school among people who also know loss. Her principal is from Crimea and was forced to flee after Russia seized the peninsula nine years ago.

63-year-old Olha Tymoshenko – blonde and blessed with a bright nature – is in many ways unlike her friend Mukhina. But the shadow creeps across his face when he talks about fleeing his home and his previous life.

Both women called Kyiv School No. 309 home. The school is located in the Pozniaky district, a residential suburb of the capital.

During last year’s Russian advance on the Ukrainian capital, the school became a notorious refuge for hundreds of people fleeing the bombings over the course of several months.

The credit belongs to Tymoshenko, who insisted on preparing for what she saw as the inevitable.

At the height of the Russian push in Kyiv last spring, the school sheltered over 500 people – mostly women and children.

The lives of Tymoshenko and Mukhina were thrown together before the war, but they remained intertwined by individual losses and shared experiences in the shelter of the school basement.

He had never told these stories, or the story behind the shelter, until he sat down with CBC News in Kyiv recently.

Tymoshenko, a Ukrainian language and literature teacher, has been the principal of a school in Yevpatoria, a resort community on the Black Sea coast.

His school became a center of Ukrainian resistance, a meeting place for pro-Ukrainian parents and their children.

When the Russian authorities began to pressurize the known supporters of the Ukrainian government on the peninsula, they fled and resettled in Kyiv.

The year was 2014. It was also an important year for Mukhina.

That’s when his 27-year-old husband decided he should join the army. He saw that a bigger war was coming.

The same goes for Tymoshenko. They began preparing the school to act as a shelter in the summer of 2021, when the first signs of a full-scale war appeared in the media.

Prepare for the worst

It is a personal initiative.

“We have a lot of things to take care of,” Tymoshenko said. “We started to manage the building, fixing the question of drinking water for everyone, security measures, etc. The organization has been our responsibility.”

The organization pays.

Mukhina said she was lost and scared on the second day of the full-scale war – February 25, 2022. Missiles crashed into her neighborhood, hitting nearby buildings. Mukhina looked at the land, then called Tymoshenko, who told her to “grab the children and go to school.”

In shelters, people sleep in corners on mattresses. Tables were taken down from the classroom and pushed together to form makeshift cots. There is a stove set up outside to cook food.

The shelter even has its own security. All visitors have their documents checked to ensure that no saboteurs are allowed in, Mukhina said.

Life is finally assuming a regular rhythm. Although the conditions outside were dire, the atmosphere inside the shelter was comforting. Mukhina said people would share food and equipment. The children were playing with their phones and each other.

Classes started online in Ukraine on March 27, 2022 and both women returned to work. Mukhina went up and taught away from regular classes while continuing to live in a basement shelter.

It is very dangerous to return home for a long time, Mukhina said. Most people stay in shelters and only go home to shower and come back with fresh clothes.

Some families stay for months.

There are many paintings on the concrete walls of the shelter. Many depict Ukrainian cities and their symbols. Some of these cities – including Crimea – are currently occupied or have been besieged by Russia.

“In schools today, we have many displaced children,” Tymoshenko said. “This is a small way to support them. It feels better, when you can see your home remembered, even if you are now far from your home.”

Mukhina said she was grateful for Tymoshenko’s foresight and determination.

“I am very grateful to Olha for what she did,” he said. “The basement is ready to receive people during the war, and we don’t even know that they are taking it seriously and preparing.”

The two women spoke to CBC News at the shelter, which is now empty. Tymoshenko said it remained on alert as the air strike “could start at any time.”