How a Ukrainian teacher helped students escape Russia's invasion, and still graduate

BORODYANKA, Ukraine — Viktoria Timoshenko's biology classroom is a surreal sight. She didn't recognize it at first, she says.

In March, while her small town of Borodyanka, an hour's drive northwest of Kyiv, was under attack, a Russian shell tore through the wall and ripped down the ceiling. Half of it droops down over a pile of bricks and dust. You can hear the traffic outside now, through the large hole where the windows used to be.

Ukrainian forces liberated this area in April. It took a few weeks, but residents are now trickling back in, assessing the damage, filling in Russian-dug trenches with a backhoe, tending their neglected gardens, and recounting the stories of what they endured, and how.

Timoshenko, 25, with dark curly hair, is in her first year