How the war in Ukraine has forever changed the children in one kindergarten class

In the city of Kharkiv, in northeast Ukraine, there is a kindergarten classroom with bright yellow and green walls and long, gauzy curtains. It's filled with toys and books.

The lockers — purple, green and yellow with name tags on the front: Sofiia, Daniel, Bohdan — are still filled with children's belongings: shoes, backpacks and a drawing of a snowman.

But these days, there are no children.

A blessing, given that on a sunny day last August, a Russian artillery attack hit the school building, shattering nearly every window in the classroom. A fate thousands of schools across Ukraine have met since the war with Russia began.

"It's not the damage to the school that I mourn," Yana Tsyhanenko, the head of school, said that day as she surveyed the damage, the glass crunching under her feet. "It's the destruction of childhood."

Under the dust and debris, the classroom told a story of life before the war, of the lives of 27 students and their teacher, disrupted and forever changed.

The lunch menu with the date Feb. 24 — the day that Russia invaded — was still hanging on the wall, advertising the buckwheat soup and cabbage that was never served. A chess game was frozen mid-match, waiting for someone to make the next move.

Near a window, a cluster of plastic pots with the sprouts of African violets sat on a table, each flower planted by a student in the days before schools in Kharkiv shut down. A gift for their mothers. Ready to grow. Full of potential.

So often in war, the buildings that have been damaged are the most visible. But what about the invisible damage? The human, less-deadly, far-deeper scars?

What had happened to the children who once learned here?

Answering that question began an eight-month journey across Ukraine and Europe and to the United States. Time spent with children who now want to drive tanks or fly jets when they grow up, who have trouble sleeping, and who are scared. Friendships uprooted, children struggling to remember, others wanting to forget. But also children laughing and learning new languages — and beginning to dream.

Their stories make up one kindergarten classroom, but they also represent the millions of children from Ukraine who have left and who have stayed.

A yearbook, a text chat and a book about every student

The teacher in charge of that green classroom