(HRW) – It’s September, the beginning of a new school year in Ukraine, but the children of the small village of Nikishine in eastern Ukraine no longer have a school to go to. Before the war, 58 children attended the village school. Now, the ruins of the building look eerie in the blazing summer heat. There are gaping holes instead of windows, and huge chunks of the roof are missing. Inside the school, pieces of chairs and desks, mangled world maps and books are strewn across the floors, mixed with broken glass, half buried under piles of rubble. Classroom doors are shattered or torn off. Broken lights are hanging by the thread. The walls that are still standing are pockmarked by shrapnel and shell fragments.
