Education Minister: 211 schools destroyed since Russia invaded

Published March 7, 2022. Updated March 7 at 10:56 am

The burnt out remains of a building destroyed by Russian army shelling in the second largest Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, in the east of the country on March 6, 2022. - On the eleventh day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on March 6, 2022, Russian forces pressed a siege of the key southern port of Mariupol and destroyed an airport in the west of the country. The Ukrainian capital Kyiv remains under Ukrainian control as does Kharkiv in the east, with the overall picture of the Russian ground advance little changed over the last 24 hours in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance. (Photo by Sergey BOBOK / AFP)

Photo by AFP

Exactly 211 Ukrainian schools have been either destroyed or damaged since Russia launched a fuller-scale war on Feb. 24.

Speaking to the national legislature’s Rada channel, Education and Science Minister Serhhiy Shkarlet said that the number schools being hit by Russian shells or rockets is increasing.

“Some of them are completely damaged, some partially,” he said.

School instruction has been suspended nationwide since Russia commenced a multi-pronged invasion that included entry from Belarus and the occupied parts of the Donbas and Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

On March 6, eight Russian cruise missile struck the central city of Vinnytsia, destroying the regional capital’s airport, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

He called Russia’s targeting of civilian infrastructure “brutal” and cynical while again calling on the U.S. and NATO to enforce a no-fly zone over the country to prevent further destruction amid relentless Russian bombardment.