"To be honest, when liberation happened, we were crying," says the deputy headmistress. "We could all breathe more easily." Security and Defence Editor @haynesdeborah Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player The date scribbled on the blackboard of a classroom in southern Ukraine still reads 23 February. It was the day before Russia launched its invasion - and the last time children in the village of Snihurivka were able to study at their school. Lines of desks and chairs stand empty - as if frozen in time. An abandoned pair of little shoes, a drawstring bag of clothes and the odd pen offer the only hint of the routine, school-time bustle that once filled this building. In its place for the past nine months has been only fear as the building became an impromptu bomb shelter for local residents. Only now are staff finally able to consider reopening to students after a major Ukrainian counter-offensive recaptured the village, in the region of Mykolaiv, from Russian han