EU and Lithuania fund underground school opened in Ukraine’s Sumy region
Saturday 5th September 2026 on 16:00 in
Lithuania
An underground school funded by the European Union and Lithuania has opened in Ukraine’s Sumy region, allowing 700 children to return to classes, LRT reported. The facility was built by the Central Project Management Agency and is designed to keep education running during shelling, air raids and power disruptions.
The dual-use facility is expected to serve for up to 100 years. It has 12 fully equipped classrooms that can accommodate up to 500 people, with lessons held in shifts. The school will also offer extracurricular activities and sports.
“Every Ukrainian child has the right to learn safely, and the opening of this underground school in Sumy is powerful evidence of what solidarity can achieve,” EU Ambassador to Ukraine Katarina Mathernova said at the opening.
The project cost 2.4 million euros and was completed in less than a year. The newly built facility covers more than 1,350 square metres.
The programme was initiated and funded by the EU and Lithuania, with Ireland also contributing. Lithuanian Deputy Foreign Minister Kristupas Vaitiekūnas said Ukraine’s recovery could not wait until the war ended.
The shelter includes technology-equipped classrooms, computer rooms and sports areas, as well as advanced ventilation, climate control and fire safety systems. A backup generator with double protection is designed to provide full energy resilience.
Ukrainian Deputy Education and Science Minister Dmytro Zavhorodnyi said the new shelter would allow hundreds of children to return to school and continue learning in person.
The programme to build new shelters for Ukrainian schools aims to create safe, modern dual-use facilities in frontline and heavily affected regions. Schools in six Ukrainian regions were selected, with similar underground facilities planned for the Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv and Kharkiv regions. The first such shelter has been operating in the Odesa region for more than a year.
More than 11 percent of the construction workers on the Sumy project were Ukrainian war veterans, who were included in the reconstruction work as part of their social and economic reintegration.