Ukraine's heavily-shelled Kharkiv builds underground schools

The city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, which has been shelled almost daily by Russian forces, will build a series of schools underground to protect children, city officials said Wednesday.

The second-largest city in Ukraine, Kharkiv lies just several dozen kilometres from the border with Russia, whose forces have pummelled the city with artillery since the start of the invasion in early 2022.

"After the first underground school project was successfully implemented in Ukraine, construction of three more such facilities has begun in Kharkiv," city officials said in a statement.

Mayor Igor Terekhov said the city, which launched its first underground school earlier this year, was allocating its own funds for the new schools to make headway as soon as possible.

"Kharkiv needs modern air defence systems that will protect the sky, so that people can live in more or less normal conditions and so children can study in peace," he said in the statement.

The announcement follows a pattern in towns and cities along the front line in Ukraine.

Further south, authorities  in the Donetsk region this week said they were constructing underground wards at a hospital in the town of Pokrovsk, some 25 kilometres from Russian forces.

The Kremlin's forces have been pushing deeper into the Donetsk region in recent weeks and in May launched a surprise ground offensive in Kharkiv.

The Security Services of Ukraine meanwhile said it had detained a 36-year-old woman in Kharkiv for passing sensitive military information to Russian forces.

She faces eight years in prison, the statement said.