Oleh* (on right), 4, plays with his friends in the kindergarten basement during air raid alert (Anastasiia Zahoskina / Save the Children)
KYIV, February 20 — Children in Ukraine have been forced to hide underground for an average of about 920 hours in the last year – equivalent to 38.3 days or more than a month - since the conflict in Ukraine escalated, Save the Children said today.
Sources that aggregate official data to calculate the number and duration of air raid sirens across Ukraine show that a total of 16,207 sirens were announced during the past year, lasting for about an hour on average. Sirens warn civilians of a missile strike or shelling threat, prompting them to take shelter. Families and children may end up spending up to 8 hours underground unable to leave due to continuous missile attacks.
In Kharkiv, for example, there were more than 1,700 air sirens in the past year lasting for about 1,500 hours total, while regions of Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia experienced over 1,100 hours of alarms each.
Along the frontline in the south-east of Ukraine, shelling almost never ceases. Families there have been forced to abandon their homes - many of them now destroyed - for life underground without basic conveniences including electricity, water, and heating.
“We were all crying, we were terrified to death,”Sophia*, 16, recalls how she woke up to explosions and sirens on 24 February in Kharkiv.
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