Hundreds of GBUs every day, evacuations from the region and spring. How frontline Sumy and Sumy region live
People in Sumy have recently been operating with a new time marker – before and after August 6, 2024. It was on this day that the Ukrainian Armed Forces entered the Kursk region of Russia, and since then Sumy has become a distinctly frontline city.
Now it is a powerful hub of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with a noticeable military presence, and therefore increased attention from the enemy: missile and drone attacks, destruction, injuries and deaths have become more frequent.
How is Sumy region, the region with the longest border with Russia in Ukraine, living now? Read the report by LIGA.net.
Sums in the middle of spring
You can feel the proximity of the war far away on the way in: on a certain section of the route, the passenger train passes critically close to the Russian border – up to ten kilometers. And it's hard not to notice the presence of the Armed Forces' defense engineering – reinforced concrete "dragon's teeth" in the distance and other fortifications.
At the exit from the station, a large number of military patrols check documents mostly of men of mobilization age.
The weather is great for mid-spring. We can say that summer has fallen on Ukraine.
People of all ages walk along the sidewalks: elderly women are still wearing warm clothes, while young people are in a hurry to expose as much of their naked bodies to the sun's rays as possible – boys in shorts and girls in T-shirts. However, male youth are represented on the streets mainly by students and teenagers, and there are very few men aged 30+. But such are the times: who is at war, who is avoiding meeting with the CCC.
The streets are clean. My eye as a resident of the capital notices this immediately: I don't remember such cleanliness in Kyiv.
So, a clean city, smiling faces, gentle sunshine... But yesterday, on Palm Sunday, a terrible event happened, and the news of it spread around the world. A barbaric rocket attack on the central part of Sumy claimed 35 lives and injured more than 100 people.
So I'm heading to the scene of the tragedy.
The second day of emergency work is underway, and the rubble is being cleared. The media are adding news details. At the same fateful intersection of Petropavlivska Street and Akademichny Lane, there are burnt-out cars. Equipment is at work, and tired rescuers sit down to rest. Volunteers are cutting wooden boards to replace the broken glass in the windows. Blood is no longer visible on the asphalt, but they tell me that where there are black wet spots, there were bloody bodies. There are still a lot of spots, but they are covered with dust, trampled on, and rubbed off by the wheels of vehicles. Soon they will be gone altogether.
Amidst the endless amount of rubble, twisted iron, broken glass, dust and ash, there are mountains of flowers and children's toys that are being brought to the site of the tragedy by concerned citizens as a sign of pity and sympathy.
Shards of broken glass
Construction worker Oleksiy Kliuyev lives near the site of the tragedy. When the first explosion occurred, he was drinking coffee on his balcony and getting dressed to go to work. A minute later, the second explosion shattered the glass from the windows in his entrance.
"I was at this intersection in a few minutes and saw a terrible picture: there was a bus without windows, cars were burning nearby. Black smoke was pouring out, and there were more explosions – probably wheels and gas tanks exploding. People were scattering in all directions – crippled, bloody, they were stretching as far away from the intersection as possible. Many bodies were lying without signs of life – mangled by the blast wave, some already badly burned. Rescuers arrived very quickly, and the wounded were taken to a nearby bomb shelter, given aid, and bandaged. There were also exhausted, bloody people sitting under the fences. I had seen a lot of things before, but this was a scary picture," says Oleksiy .
We were talking at the entrance to the rocket-damaged Congress Center of Sumy State University. We had to pause for long periods of time because of the loud machinery, as a tractor with a large street cleaning brush drove past us from time to time. White glass shards were flying from under the brush, so we had to not only stop talking, but also turn away and cover our heads with our jackets.
Oleksii is a chief engineer at the construction and installation department of Nasosenergomash and the head of the Sumy Dobrobat volunteer organization, which helps to eliminate the consequences of enemy shelling.
The history of Dobrobat began on April 28, 2022, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces liberated the Russian-occupied areas of Sumy region – the cities of Trostianets, Okhtyrka and nearby villages. Then it became necessary to dismantle the destroyed buildings, preserve them or restore them. Sappers were the first to come to the ruins to check for explosives. They were followed by the State Emergency Service, and then by utilities and volunteers. There was enough work for everyone.
"Usually, the number of volunteers on such missions is many times higher than the number of utility workers. In addition to us, such volunteer projects as Zhytomyr. Sowing Good, Sumy Defense, Lion Pride, and others. "Our Dobrobat team employs 30 people, and if we take into account all the volunteers, I think there will be 200. Professional rescuers have enough work with equipment, but if they are also assigned to cut sheets of OSB and board up windows, they will simply not have enough hands. Instead, such work is currently in high demand. Because where one house is damaged by an explosion, the windows of ten neighboring houses are blown out," says Oleksiy Kliuyev.
"War is vile, but it teaches"
An activist of the charitable organization Zhytomyr. Sowing Good" charity organization and coordinator of the Civilian Preparedness Center of the Serhiy Prytula Charitable Foundation, Fedir Zaitsevsky, heard a powerful explosion while he was driving in his car. After getting his bearings, he immediately headed to the city of tragedy.
"I have a bulletproof vest and two first aid kits with tourniquets and other first aid supplies in my car. I grabbed the first aid kits, ran, and immediately saw a man of about 25-30 years old with a penetrating abdominal wound. Next to me was a guy with a large medical backpack, probably a military medic. Together we started to help the wounded man: we checked for massive bleeding, covered all the openings on his body, and then handed him over to the ambulance crew to be taken to the hospital. And so we helped other victims. We moved people to the basement of the university building, where there were already many guys – medics and military. They carried water, took people to evacuation vehicles. Everyone was helpful, many people actually came to the rescue," says Fedir Zaitsevsky.
Finally, he adds philosophically: "War is vile, but it teaches. If this terrible shelling had happened in 2022, there could have been many more victims. In the fourth year of the war, there are a lot of people who know how to help.".
An iconic place for Sumy residents
According to Sumy local historian Yevhen Murza, author of the Sumygard project, two Russian Iskanders on the morning of April 13 hit not just the city center, but its "historical heart," a kind of place of power.
"Three buildings at the intersection of Akademichny Lane and Petropavlivska Street. One of them, which was hit by a rocket, is the former District Court, built in 1917. It was reconstructed during the Soviet era – the regional committee of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR was located there before moving to a new building on the then Lenin Square," says Yevhen Murza.
Opposite the district court is a one-story nineteenth-century mansion that was also badly damaged. It now houses the Institute of Applied Physics. But the building itself is historic – it is associated with the well-known Sumy families of Sukhanov, Sumovskyi, and Kondratiev. By the way, Gerasym Kondratiev is the founder of the city of Sumy.
"This brick manor once stood on the site of Kondratiev's wooden house. The destroyed Congress Center was built in 2008, but on the territory of this very historic manor. So, imagine how significant this place is for Sumy residents. This is an ancient place in itself," adds the historian .
Until recently, the estate was separated from the sidewalk by a wrought-iron fence, also ancient and of historical and artistic value. It survived the turbulence of the First and Second World Wars, but... did not withstand the insidious attack of the Russian army.
Evacuation under the wings of an angel
Due to the constant shelling of the border areas in Sumy region, the White Angel, a special police unit that evacuates people from frontline settlements, is working here. We go with them to the evacuation in an armored minibus. From the outside it looks like a special bank collection vehicle, while from the inside it looks like an ambulance with a medical bed-stretcher. We talk while we're driving.
"In recent months, Russians have been methodically destroying our border villages. They are using UAVs, FPV drones. Most of the locals have already been evacuated, but not all. And this is despite the fact that the villages are a few kilometers from the border. Enemy drones can see them in the palm of their hands. The UAVs destroy schools, village clubs, hospitals, and other notable buildings. "EFPs" are afraid of specific human households, where they can see signs of life – cattle, well-tended gardens," says police lieutenant colonel Serhiy Tarasenko.
In the border villages, there is no electricity, no communication, no shops. There are almost no people here, and those who remain find it difficult to survive alone. Still, some villagers are delaying the evacuation to the last minute. They realize that there is no other way out, promise to leave, but... every time they find an excuse to say: let me leave tomorrow. For them, the fear of leaving their home is stronger than the fear of dying .
Again, there are only a few of them in each village, but there are many of them along the entire border. So the White Angel groups do not sit idle. They have different schemes of work. There was a time when they went door-to-door and conducted explanatory work on evacuation. Instead, now they work on requests from village elders, who communicate with residents and coordinate with the police the details of the evacuation – address and time, number of people and property, etc .
We are on our way to the village of Krasnopillia, once the district center and now the center of the community of the same name. A school, a hospital, a church. Many destroyed buildings.
We stop at a house where we are supposed to take two people – 77-year-old Mykola Ivanovych and his 54-year-old daughter Olha. The White Angel group consists of four policemen. Two immediately jump out of the car and take up positions in areas where they can see more of the sky. They have their shotguns at the ready. These officers act as their own air defense system – they look for attack drones and are ready to shoot them down with their rifles in case of an attack. Hunting cartridges filled with small pellets are more effective than those fired by bullet weapons, such as Kalashnikovs.
No drones are heard, evacuation can begin.
We quickly pick up people and their belongings. In addition to bags with clothes and medicines, we also pack a cat. The cat in the bag will go to the evacuation. Olha Mykolaivna looks exhausted. She asks us to wait for a minute and starts to remove an old faded icon from the wall. The icon is quite simple – an illustration from a church calendar glued to the wallpaper. The woman cuts at the wall with a knife and eventually brings the icon out in front of her. Sand spills out of it, because a piece of the cut wallpaper has pulled the plaster with it.
The man asks for a minute to perform one last act in his house: he brings two wooden slats with nails already in them. With them he quickly nails the door crosswise, just like in the movies. His daughter is crossing herself and crying, while the man just looks at the crossed door .
They literally gave up on their lives before the evacuation. No one on the planet knows what will happen to them and this house next.
We-all seven of us-stand as if in an interstitial state. There is an unannounced minute of silence.
On the way, Captain Alyona Stavytska fills out documentation and clarifies personal data of the evacuees.
- "Oh, I still have my Soviet passport, what should I do?" Olha suddenly remembers. This stuns everyone. "Does this still happen?" I want to shout out, but I'm silent .
- But you will somehow make it, you will not be lost," Alyona reassures.
- They did not want to take me to the monastery. Where will they take me now? Who needs me?" Olha cries out quietly and bursts into tears.
Her father is worried in his own way – he smiles nervously and talks and talks. He said that he kept pigeons to the last, "two dozen ordinary flying pigeons and a couple of carrier pigeons, they fly 100 kilometers easily." That yesterday a Russian drone killed a young man of 35 years old in Krasnopillia. He was riding a bicycle down the street, there was an explosion, he fell down, blood was coming out of his back. He was lying for a long time..
Mykola Ivanovych also said that three of his grandsons are fighting: "On the Pokrovske, Siverske directions and one somewhere near Kharkiv. All three are engineers – two are electronics engineers, one is a power engineer. I have been a driver all my life. And I did my conscript service in the navy, in Feodosia, for four years...".
In Krasnopillia, at the second address, we picked up another woman with her belongings. We learned from her the sad statistics that she said she heard from the starosta herself: 29 CABs arrived on the territory of the Krasnopil community the day before yesterday. This is a lot, but not a record, the woman says. Since the largest number of daily arrivals in the community is 53 guided aerial bombs.
All three evacuees with their belongings are taken by our "armored personnel carrier" further from the border, where they are transferred to another vehicle – ordinary, unarmored. The evacuees will be taken to a shelter in Sumy, where the relevant services will work with them.
the "White Angel" turns around and heads back toward the border – to the village of Osoyivka.
And again, the same algorithm of actions: two with guns "on the lookout", two working with people.
We load bunches of food, blankets, clothes, three-liter jars of cereals, canned tomatoes, rolled lard, sacked potatoes, and even last year's onions, which have already sprouted fresh green shoots. And also a goat and four little goats.
Alyona takes the goats with practiced movements, carries them to the car, where they are picked up and placed in the cabin by Senior Lieutenant Viktor Kiyashko .
Kateryna Ivanovna, the owner of the farm, shows me what to load, and I carry things with her husband Mykola. Finally, we are finishing up.
A minute ago, a GBU exploded somewhere on the other side of the village, and now a mushroom of smoke is visible, and this encourages everyone to push themselves: faster, faster, let's move!
But it turns out that not everyone is leaving – Mykola stays behind and gives a subtle farewell sign to his wife.
On the way, I learn from Kateryna that the man stayed because of his elderly father, who is so weak (he turned 89 three days ago) that he is unlikely to survive the move.
- Yesterday, my grandfather went out to the kitchen, but today he did not get out of bed. He said he was going to die. Well, what can you do for him – you can't forbid him...," his daughter-in-law says sadly about the old man.
- Where are you going?" I ask.
- Sumy. I'm going to give the goats to a colleague from work, who has a private house. And then home – I have an apartment in Sumy. I don't know what to do next. You see, my father-in-law is dying, and my husband stayed with him. Maybe I'll come back, because I don't know how they are doing..
Crying.
A typical life formula: she and her husband from a rural family went to the city to work at a factory when they were young, got an apartment, left it to their grown children, and returned to the village to care for their frail parents and face their own old age.
A time to cast stones, and a time to gather stones. But the war made adjustments to this biblical paradigm, adding a third round of the spiral: a time to scatter, a time to gather, and... to scatter stones again – to return from the village to the city again.
People say goodbye to villages in Sumy region.
The goats generously fulfilled their vital needs in the car, so one of the policemen takes out a brush and starts cleaning the evacuation vehicle with the usual movements.
"Our vehicle is like Noah's Ark," says Major Ihor Borko, "We transported all kinds of animals: chickens, geese, turkeys, dogs, goats... And, mind you, in an armored vehicle that can withstand machine gun bullets and shrapnel – where else would they protect livestock like that? Noah had no armor on the ark.".
New Generation Warfare
Has the flow of IDPs from Sumy increased since August 6, 2024? Entrepreneur Viktor Kolinko half-jokingly says that if you look at the number of vehicles on city streets, it seems that there are even more people. This is thanks to the military – there are a lot of them now.
"Trade has become more lively, and cafes and restaurants are more busy. In the markets, every morning you can see an influx of military pickup trucks for groceries, they have their order packages prepared in advance, they quickly load them and then head back to the border, to their positions. I was even told a picture: a soldier at the market called a drone with a radio, and it flew right to her by geo-marking. A drone with a big basket, a list of things to buy and a bank card. The girl and the merchant packed everything, she paid, put the card back in the basket and said into the radio: ready! The drone flew to its position with the purchases. This is called a new generation of warfare," says Viktor Kolinko.
The Russian city of Sudzha is 100 kilometers from the regional center of Kursk, while the distance from Sudzha to Sumy is only 45. So in the old days, people from Sudzha were always frequent visitors to Sumy. Serious large purchases, specialized car services, paid clinics – all this is closer in Sumy. And there were so many joint businesses, including smuggling. The proximity of the border always feeds – in all countries, at all times.
Sumy is now the regional center of Ukraine closest to Russia. And Sumy region has the longest common border with the aggressor country – 564 kilometers. For comparison, this is the length of Ukraine from south to north – from the Black Sea to Belarus. And this border is currently under the protection of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Sumy is not the last logistics center in the complex system of this protection.
Most Sumy residents are sympathetic to the presence of the military in the city. But there are also those who are dissatisfied: they say that the military are bringing trouble to the city, because if they were not there, Sumy would not be shelled. People who think this way are frightened by the fact that military vehicles drive into supermarket parking lots. They say that if they hit them, we will suffer as well. But these voices are not loud – most people understand the situation correctly: if there are no Ukrainian soldiers in the city, there will be Russian soldiers.
- Aren't you scared? Have you thought about leaving Sumy to go deeper into Ukraine or to Europe?" I ask 22-year-old journalist Anna Shpurik.
- No, there are no such plans. Although anything is possible: if the Russians are actively advancing, if they are on the outskirts of the city and we are threatened with occupation, then I will think about evacuation. But for now, there is no danger of capture, and the danger of dying from an enemy missile... Well, this is a reality in any other place in Ukraine.
It is noteworthy that Anna does not consider herself too brave. She says that she is also afraid of alarm sirens, especially at night:
"It may sound strange, but ballistics doesn't scare me too much, because it's an instantaneous explosion, a second. If you hear this explosion, it means that the missile did not come for you. "Shahed" – it buzzes in the air from a distance, the sound is growing. The air defense system starts firing, and five, ten, fifteen seconds pass before it becomes clear that the "Shahed" has flown further and is also "not yours." That's why 'shaheds' are subconsciously perceived as something more terrifying than heavy missiles, although missiles actually cause more grief," Anna shares her feelings.
The girl said that the day after the tragic Palm Sunday, she called Tetiana Nyankina, the director of her and her husband's family theater, the Nyankinas. The theater was located in the basement of the Congress Center, and the explosion left the building with its ceiling collapsed. There were no casualties, but equipment and costumes were lost .
In addition to working with professional actors, the couple also runs a theater studio for children and teenagers called Repyakh. One of the studio members, 13-year-old Mykhailo, and his friend happened to be nearby and were injured. They were taken to the hospital. Incredibly, despite all this horror, two days later, children and parents called Tetiana asking how soon rehearsals would resume and where exactly.
So Sumy lives and will live.
And the Nannies theater, by the way, has already found a new basement and is preparing for rehearsals.
Before leaving, I visited the site of the tragedy once again. There were even more flowers there.
