Sofia Stasyuk wins each time she hears explosions of increasingly frequent missiles and air defense noise during her Ukrainian samy hometown.
The 20 -year -old journalist took photos for an architecture project a few meters from the place where two Russian ballistic missiles hit the city on Sunday, killing 35 people in one of the deadliest attacks on the war.
Many in the northeast city are determined to continue as usual, but the nerves are not far below the surface in the middle of climbing in strikes and persistent rumors of the Moscow army could launch a major offensive in the border region.
“When the ballistic missiles strike, or when there are explosions … Whenever you wander pointed sounds,” she told AFP in the city center.
A few moments later, the air alerts resounded and a dozen people descended the nearest refuge – the Lilas and Bébé Bébé Blue Building from the Sumy Banking Academy, whose windows had been broken during the attack on Sunday.
The channels on social networks that follow the incoming projectiles had warned against a threat of ballistic missile from the Russian Kursk region, just on the other side of the border.
If it was the super fast Iskander missile – the type used in the double strike on Sunday – it would have reached Sumy in the snap.
– “getting worse” –
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia is preparing a new offensive in the Sumy region.
The regional capital is 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the border and was the military base of the cheeky offensive of Ukraine in the Kursk Russia region last summer.
Moscow has since escaped Ukraine of all except a little ground and pushed, the army claiming that it had captured certain Ukrainian border villages – affirmations rejected by Kyiv.
The AFP analysis of the Institute for the Study of War Data shows that Russia controls about 95 square kilometers from the Sumy region – from almost nothing at the start of the year.
For Russia, an attack on Sumy could be considered a revenge for Ukraine's offensive on Kursk.
It would also represent unfinished affairs after Ukraine rejected Russia's attempts to surround and capture the city at the start of the 2022 invasion.
In the refuge, the director of the Sumy Regional Museum, Vladyslav Terentiv, resigned to live with the threat.
“We are a border area-it has always been this war, and it will always be,” he sighed.
He couldn't understand the idea of leaving Sumy.
“Our team, our people, has a mission today – to preserve cultural heritage. And we do exactly that.”
Back outside, the threat of missiles has passed, the mayor Artem Kobzar warned that the Russian pressure should not increase.
“When they announced that a missile was flying to Sumy, everyone has dispersed. Unfortunately, the dynamics do not improve, they are getting worse,” he told AFP.
He had spoken to police officers who patrol near a fortune memorial to the victims of Sunday's strike.
“What mood can there be after 35 people died at the same time?” he asked darkly.
– “packaging” –
Air attacks against Sumy have “considerably increased” in the past two months, Oleg Strulka, a spokesperson for Ukrainian emergency services, told AFP.
Some residents have enough.
From his bar at the corner of the street, Roman Vitkovsky said that the mood had changed among its customers and friends.
“There are people who have not left all this time, who walked with their children in these streets in the city center,” he said behind the bar.
“Because the attack was in the city center, they are (now) packaging.”
But he would remain.
“They increase the pressure. (But), it seems to me that if they took three years to do 50 kilometers in Donetsk, and that we have 35 kilometers here, then we have a little time,” he said, referring to the slow advance and the grinding of Russia through the rest of the front line.
Stasyuk was also about to stay, trying to keep his city alive with his photography project.
“We are simply going with the flow, whatever will be,,” she told AFP, tears creating.
“Sumy is my hometown – Sorry to have cried – Sumy is my hometown, and I really don't want to be such ruins here, so that people die.”
BRW / JC / FG
