The bustle of daily life in Ukraine’s Sumy makes it hard to believe that its people have faced a constant threat of death since Russia invaded their country three years ago.
Just days ago, Putin’s forces targeted the city centre in back-to-back missile strikes, killing 35 people and injuring over 100. It marked the deadliest attack on Ukrainian civilians this year.
Neighbours chatted in their apartment blocks, watching children play games in the courtyards. Pausing to look up, they would see the buzzing of attack drones and the familiar sounds of Ukrainian air defences before going back to their strange routine which is quickly becoming usual.
Sumy is only 18 miles from the border of Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian soldiers continue to hold on to the strip of territory they took in a surprise offensive last summer. Residents of the city say there has been an increase in attacks in recent weeks, but none as devastating as Sunday’s airstrike which targeted a busy intersection.
It came just over over a week after a separate missile strike killed 20 people on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih. Russia says its forces were targeting a meeting of soldiers in the attack which killed nine children, but evidence has not been provided to support the claim.
The attacks on their cities has left many Ukrainians wondering where the next will occur and cast a shadow over the ongoing ceasefire talks being brokered by the United States. The talks have produced only muted results, as Russia insists on conditions Ukraine deems impossible and Kyiv believes Moscow’s forces are gearing up for a fresh offensive.
The attack ended some lives and shattered others
To the people of Sumy, the talks seem far-removed from their daily struggles.
As some of the victims of Sunday’s attack were laid to rest on Tuesday, Viktor Voitenko, 56, described how he ended up paralyzed in a hospital bed. He was working as a security guard when the second missile hit and shattered his spine. As he spoke, his wife Hanna, 40, lovingly applied his deodorant — a simple act he could no longer perform.
Mention of the ceasefire negotiations conjured a weary smile from her. “It’s empty talks. They don’t move anywhere. It seems to be public relations to me,” Hanna Voitenko said. “Nothing happens to bring comfort to regular people.”
Her husband offered his own take: “They are stalling for time.”
Work, errands and planned family visits brought the victims of Sunday’s attack to the intersection of Petropavlivska Street and the state university on Sunday morning.
Asia Pohorila, 20, was working at a cafe and thinking about whether to buy pastries after her shift when the first missile strike left her in shock and bleeding profusely from her legs. On Tuesday, the times “10:20” and “10:23” were still scrawled in marker on her thighs, noting when medics applied tourniquets to them.
A teen springs into action
Maryna Illiashenko and her 13-year old son, Kyrylo, heard the sound of that first blast ricochet across the center city as they waited for a bus.
They were headed to visit his grandmother, but the teenager was more excited about wrestling practice later that afternoon. Undeterred, they boarded the bus when it arrived a few minutes later. One stop later, the second missile crashed a few feet from from the vehicle, scorching nearby cars, burning passengers alive, killing the bus driver and causing shrapnel to rain down. Three fragments tore through Kyrylo’s scalp and scratched Maryna’s face.
Enveloped in smoke and debris, the teen leaped out of the shattered bus window and pried open the locked door from outside, saving half a dozen trapped passengers, witnesses said.
“I don’t want to think about this as a new type of reality for Sumy city. We can clearly see that our frontline cities are being erased,” Oleh Strilka, a spokesperson for the city’s State Emergency Service, said while standing outside the collapsed facade of the university building, where the second missile struck.
“The most painful thing for me is our children. Why do they need to suffer?” he asked. “I don’t want our 13-year-old kids becoming heroes.”
Liudmyla Shelukhina, 70, was waiting in a neighbor’s house for a haircut. She was standing in line in the kitchen when the windows suddenly shattered.
She said the fridge she was next to saved her life. “I would have been decapitated.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” joked her husband, Viktor, a former soldier. Their son was hospitalized in the attack.
No relief for first responders
Rescue workers like Dmytro Shevchenko, 31, have to be prepared to head to the scene of the next attack at all times. He was among the first to arrive at the university grounds on Sunday. Most people he found were too badly injured to help, he said, wiping away tears.
He holds on to little hope that ceasefire talks will bear fruit. “I just don’t believe in it,” he said.
The children’s hospital where Kyrylo Illiashenko is recovering bears the scars of repeated drone attacks. More than 100 windows were shattered only two weeks ago when a massive drone attack struck nearby, said Chief Dr. Ihor Zmislya.
As workers cleared rubble from the sites of the missile strikes Tuesday and Kyrylo expounded on his favorite computer games, an explosion sounded in the distance. From the teen’s hospital window, plumes of smoke could be seen rising from a nearby railway line.
“This is our reality,” said Zmislya. “It happens all the time.”
