It was late at night, and a fire had broken out in an apartment building that had been struck by a Russian drone just minutes earlier. Residents stumbled down from upper floors amid thick smoke and told firefighters, who were checking in on all the residents, that a young woman was renting the top-floor apartment.
Artem, 37, was one of several police officers on duty the night of March 13 who rushed upstairs to try to find her. On the fifth floor, they opened the metal door to the woman's apartment and thick black smoke billowed into the stairwell. On the other side of the door, they saw nothing.
“There is no apartment,” said Artem, who gave only his first name for security reasons. “There is only a one-meter-thick floor and then nothing else.”
The attack, which killed four people inside the building, was one of several in recent months in and around the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, just 25 miles from the Russian border. Ukrainian officials have increasingly warned that Sumy is the target of a new offensive by Russian forces across the border.
“The atmosphere is very anxious,” said Captain Dmytro Lantushenko, 38, a spokesman for the 117th Home Guard Brigade based in Sumy. “People watch the news, they watch Telegram channels, they can’t ignore the news about a possible attack on Sumy.” Telegram is one of Ukraine’s most widely used social media channels.
Captain Lantushenko said villages and towns near the border were being shelled every day, and guided bombs, rockets, missiles and drones had hit factories and power plants in the Sumy industrial zone. The damage was mounting, and Sumy, like much of Ukraine, was experiencing power outages.
This five-story apartment building Destroyed on March 13 Fire official Artem said the attack was carried out by an Iranian-made Shahed drone.The Russians began attacking the city center with multiple explosive drones that hit several residential buildings.
Artem said firefighters worked for four days to put out the fire and clear the rubble. Artem and a soldier's family said the attack killed a soldier who lived in one apartment and a retiree who lived in another. A family of four was crushed by the collapsed ceiling. Firefighters rescued the wife and two children, but the husband did not survive. Rescuers did not find the young woman in the top floor apartment.
On a recent morning, a 71-year-old resident named Lyubov was installing new windows in her apartment. Attacked by drone Just a week ago. She said she was not injured because she went to stand in the stairwell when she heard the air raid sirens. Like Artem, she gave only her first name for safety reasons.
With its tree-lined avenues and lush riverside parks, Sumy has the feel of a quiet provincial town. Shoppers wait at bus stops and young women push strollers in parks.
However, the city had been badly attacked before, and residents put up fierce resistance. When Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022, tanks rolled into Sumy on the first day (February 24).
Ukraine's army and security services have been ordered to withdraw, leaving behind only a small number of homeland defense forces, emergency services and hospital medical staff.
As Artyom drove back to the base around 5 p.m. that day, he was one of the first to encounter Russian troops. He saw four tanks approaching along the main road. “I stopped at the traffic light,” he said, “and they stopped at the traffic light, too.” He laughed as he recalled the surreal moment.
The Russian soldiers looked relaxed, he said. One soldier, he recalled, had his rifle slung across his back and his legs crossed over the barrel of his tank. The Russians began setting up checkpoints on the edge of town, he said. But that night, members of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces attacked Russian troops and burned some of their vehicles.
Captain Lantushenko, who volunteered for the Homeland Defense Forces shortly before the invasion, said the town's residents rallied to defend the city.
“We are united,” he said. “We realize we have to defend our homeland on our own. Thousands of people like me have taken up arms.”
Faced with such strong resistance, the Russian army abandoned its plan to capture the city as it had done elsewhere. Bringing cruel consequences to residents.
“We had guys on bicycles with rifles on their backs,” Artem recalled. He said two of his friends ran a cafe with dozens of people making Molotov cocktails in the yard. “From day one, I was like: ‘If you dare to come here, come and try it.’ ”
Ukrainian troops attacked and burned Russian vehicles at two entrances to the city in the first few days. Russian troops retreated, opting instead to blockade the city, setting up positions on the perimeter and firing artillery shells from a distance.
"They kept shelling," Lyubov recalled. She gave only her first name for safety reasons to avoid repercussions for herself or her family. During that time, she moved in with her daughter and grandchildren for two months so the family could be together. “There were constant air raid sirens,” she said. “We all sat in the corridor.”
Within a month, Russian troops abandoned their northern invasion and retreated from the capital, Kiev, and the entire territory around the northeastern cities of Chernihiv and Sumy to focus on capturing the eastern Donbas region.
In the second half of 2022, further Ukrainian victories forced Russian troops to withdraw from another area of northeastern Ukraine, around the city of Kharkiv, and from the Kherson region in southern Ukraine.
But since then, the tide has turned in favor of the invading Russian forces. Ukraine has failed to The Summer of 2023 Troops and ammunition shortages due to US support Delayed by congressional hardliners.
In early May, Russia began a new offensive against Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city after Kiev. Russian troops have seized more than a dozen villages and are within artillery range of the city. Ukrainian officials say more troops are gathering near the border in preparation for an assault on Sumy.
Residents are tired and fearful of facing the grim prospect of another Russian attack.
Artem said people with cars and money left, but those with jobs or family responsibilities stayed and hoped for the best.
“I don’t believe they will come to Sumy,” Lyubov said of Russian troops, whose windows were shattered by the drone strike. “But I’m scared.”
Captain Lantushenko said he was confident the army's preparations and defenses were sufficient to withstand another Russian attack. He said Ukraine's defense forces were now well-trained and well-organized, unlike at the beginning of the war.
But he said even if the sense of solidarity remains, people are exhausted.
“No one knows when the war will end,” he said. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a friend, family member or neighbor in the military, and more and more are joining every day. It’s really hard to keep going.”
