'We will never be the same': Displaced Ukrainian children risk erosion in school, mental health

Focusing on school has been a challenge lately for 7-year-old Varvara Sydorska, given all the distractions.

Like the fact that her first-grade teacher is more than 600 miles away, leading class through flickering images on a smartphone. Or the frequent wail of air raid sirens that sends Varvara and her mom dashing off to a nearby bomb shelter. Or the blackouts that abruptly end class. Or thoughts of her dad fighting Russian troops on the frontlines.

Varvara has been slowly adjusting to her new life in Lviv, Ukraine, after evacuating to  there last year from her hometown of Kherson, when it was overrun by Russian forces.

There are swim lessons at the nearby sports complex and English tutors to keep her busy, but she misses her friends back home and only recently began venturing more than a few feet from her mother’s side. Her mother, Viktoriia Sydorska, said she worries about potential issues lurking under her daughter’s sunny demeanor.

“When we first arrived, she went from being a very lively child to a very quiet one,” said Sydorska, 33. “We’re not sure about our future – or even tomorrow. Everything can change in a minute.”

Air sirens and fear disrupt learning for kids

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine reaches its one-year mark, researchers and advocates are growing increasingly concerned over the state of more than 5 million children displaced by the war. Many have left their home country. Many others are displaced inside Ukraine, living within rocket-distance of the war.

A recent study by the New York-based nonprofit Ukrainian Children’s Action Project showed that 28% of children were separated from a family member in the past year and 24% experienced some form of shelling or bombing. The study, shared exclusively with USA TODAY, surveyed 2,000 mothers, grandmothers and guardians across the war-scarred country, and it offers a rare glimpse into the impact the war has had on children displaced within Ukraine.

The study also found:

• The percentage of children reported as doing "very good" in school slid from 25% pre-war to 13% today.
• Around 12% of internally displaced children ages 3 to 17 are not attending any school.
• Of the children not attending school, 60% of their parents said it was because their children's school was closed and 37% said they were afraid to send them.
• Children who chronically miss school do so because of air raid sirens (61%), lack of electricity or heat (49%), or health issues (44%).

Irwin Redlener, the group’s founder, said he decided to launch the study after feeling the global perception of the war in Ukraine focused mostly on the threat of bombs and rockets.

“The other threat to Ukraine’s future: the erosion of the abilities and mental states of children,” he said in an interview. “Even if the war ends tomorrow, it will represent a very serious challenge for Ukraine and the rest of the world.”

The study also showed the mental health of participating children had declined sharply since the start of the war. Of those polled, 55% of parents reported their children as being bothered by loud sounds in the past month, 41% reported their children as being irritable or apathetic and 25% said their children showed traumatic experiences in creative activities or games.

Trauma laced with resentment

Redlener, who is also founding director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and co-founder of the Children's Health Fund, has studied the impact traumatic events have on children involved in events such as Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast (2005), the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (2010) and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico (2017).

Though the children in those events share some common traits with those in Ukraine, there’s one stark difference: lingering resentment toward an enemy that could fester into anger, depression and other traits, he said.

“There’s nobody to resent if there’s a natural disaster,” Redlener said. “There’s this long tail of impact after something like (the war in Ukraine).”

Karen Redlener, Irwin's wife and nonprofit co-founder, said although the study focuses on children displaced within Ukraine, she also worries for the estimated 2 million Ukrainian children who have fled to other countries. 

"Getting these kids into schools to continue their education has proved to be exceedingly challenging," she said.

Ukrainian children arriving in the United States may feel initial relief in fleeing the war and connecting with community members or relatives, said Dylanna Grasinger, senior director of field offices for the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, an Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit. 

But within weeks or months, that relief often fades to sadness, she said. 

“The longer the war goes on, it's upsetting," Grasinger said. "You start to see a lot more depression, trauma, anxiety."

Those who evacuated inside Ukraine face even steeper challenges, as blackouts and air sirens are common even in cities not engulfed in fighting. More than half – 53% – of internally displaced families have children, "making child care and schooling a major concern," according to a September report by the International Crisis Group.

Irwin Redlener said he began going to Poland to visit with Ukrainian refugees and then later to Ukraine for a total of five trips to the region during the past year. Meeting with a group of Ukrainian high schoolers in Warsaw, he asked if or when they’d be able to forgive Russia for the invasion. Some said it would take several generations, Irwin Redlener said. Others yelled out: “Never!”

While meeting with the mayor of Lviv recently, Irwin Redlener said the mayor excused himself early. He needed to officiate over a service for four Ukrainian soldiers killed earlier that day.

“I’ve seen a lot of terrible stuff in my career, but there’s something truly heartbreaking about this,” he said. “The tragedy and the grieving is everywhere.”

'She lost her interest in life'

As Russian troops tried to occupy Kyiv last year, Yulia Kulik, 38, fled to the Netherlands with her daughter, Polina, 11. Polina attended school, communicating with her Dutch teachers in basic English. She quickly slipped into depression, Kulik said, crying every morning at breakfast and crying again at night before bed. She didn’t want to leave the house they shared with Dutch friends, uninterested in offers of bike rides or shopping trips, Kulik said.

“She couldn’t manage her emotions,” she said. “She lost her interest in life.”

In September, Kulik chose to return to Kyiv, despite the risks. Polina’s disposition improved sharply. Today, she enjoys going to school and seeing her friends, despite the frequent interruption of air raid sirens, and has learned to ride out the threat in bomb shelters. Besides school, she fills her days with tennis lessons and online English classes.

Kulik said she’s marveled at Polina’s grit and bravery in the face of such looming adversity. But what the long-term future holds for her and her daughter is impossible to predict, she said.

“We will never be the same after the war,” she said. “We will be completely different people.”

It’s not uncommon for children to show resilience amid traumatic events, said Arash Javanbakht, a psychiatrist and director of Stress, Trauma and Anxiety Research Clinic at Wayne State University in Detroit. Over the past five years, Javanbakht has been studying the impact of trauma on a group of about 400 refugees from the wars in Iraq and Syria now living in the United States.

Though some children adapt to their new surroundings without many adverse effects, a majority – around 70% – showed signs of separation anxiety. Smaller percentages showed signs of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Children risk having long-term effects from traumatic events because their brains are still developing, Javanbakht said. As their parents' stress and anxiety grow, those symptoms seep down to the children, he said. 

“In this developmental age, they’re learning that the world is a dangerous and unsafe and unfair place,” Javanbakht said.

Checking rocket attacks via iPhone app

Yuliia Kardash, 42, a translator and English teacher living in Lviv, said when the air sirens blare, the students at school are forced to retreat to a bomb shelter and school officials are not allowed to release them until they get the all-clear, even if parents arrive to retrieve them.

Just before 3 p.m. one day in December, Kardash's son, Dmytro, 11, was in his classroom anxiously waiting the last few minutes for the bell to ring when rockets slammed into a nearby borough, she said. The students were made to hunker down in a bomb shelter until 8 that night. Since then, he’s been afraid to go to school, alternating between attending in person and taking classes online, Kardash said.

Each morning, Kardash and other moms check the “Air Alert” app on their smartphones to decide how far to venture out that day, she said. A cluster of red dots moving across the app’s map toward them means Russians' rockets may be headed their way. They then need to head to a bomb shelter or stay indoors, Kardash said.

Her older son, Ivan, 18, evacuated to Poland with friends at the start of the war. He would rather learn Polish and attend a university there than return to the perils and instability of Ukraine, she said. Ivan has had issues communicating with other students and keeps mostly to himself, Kardash said.

School counselors are overwhelmed and undertrained to handle the deteriorating situation, she said.

“We’re very concerned,” Kardash said. “Most of the kids are traumatized and they don’t know how to deal with it.”

Sydorska, who fled to Lviv with her 7-year-old daughter, said she originally hoped to wait out the war in her hometown of Kherson. But when Russian troops invaded the southern port city last fall, life quickly deteriorated. Food grew scarce and blackouts became frequent, she said.

When rockets slammed near their home in March, Sydorska decided to leave with Varvara and head north. That’s the same day her husband, Maksym, headed to the front lines to join the fight. It took three arduous days to make the 600-mile trip from Kherson to Lviv, through 120 Russian checkpoints, she said.

After arriving in Lviv, Varvara wouldn’t leave her mother’s side. “Not even for a minute,” Sydorska said.

She eased her back to school through online classes. Varvara listens in on classes from 7:30 a.m. to about noon on her mother’s smartphone, and then Sydorska is expected to pad her daughter’s education with homework assignments and other tasks, she said. It eats away at her job as an accountant for a university in Kherson, which she also does online.

The constant worrying has gnawed at Sydorska's mental state. 

"I cannot be sure about my future, my daughter‘s future, whether to send her to school, whether to stay here or try another city," she said. "It's all very stressful."

Follow Jervis on Twitter: @MrRJervis.

Contributing: Chris Kenning