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Veridica.mdIn an exclusive Veridica report, we follow the traces of the attacks on Ukraine during a week that will go down in the history of this war as one of the most devastating.
Our journey begins in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, where a university building had been attacked the previous evening, marking the start of the new academic year on the first day of September.
Kyiv is by far the city with the best air defense system in all of Ukraine, although, naturally, it is not perfect. However, in the eastern regions, such attacks are even harder to fend off. Evidence of this is the obvious destruction we see on the way to the Sumy region.
Little known to the general public, Sumy is the region bordering Russia where the de facto border between the two warring countries was shifted by Ukrainian troops after the incursion into Kursk.
The villages here are caught between an illusory normality and the traces of a war that the whole world has been watching for more than two years. Along the roadside, signs warn of active mines. In some places, cars swerve around roads narrowed by concrete barricades meant to slow down traffic for document checks and to prevent the passage of tanks. But in poor rural areas, the obstacles are made of old tires.
However, the course of our journey is changed by the latest news: one of the largest attacks on Ukraine had just taken place at an educational institution in Poltava, a city located 350 kilometers east of Kyiv.
Usually, after air raids in Ukraine, volunteer tents appear almost instantly, as a first step towards restoring normalcy: here, documents are drawn up for partial or total recovery of material losses, free hot or cold drinks, meals, and even cigarettes are provided.
But in Poltava, that sense of relief was absent, even though many volunteers were trying to help people in any way they could. New threats continued to terrify those who hadn’t even had time to process everything that had happened. Alarmed firefighters pushed journalists towards shelters, away from the attack site. People were stepping on pieces of blood-stained fabric, abandoned on the sidewalk in the rescuers' rush to provide aid to the victims as quickly as possible. The rescue workers continued their efforts overnight, racing against the clock to pull victims from the rubble—some alive, others not.
But the night brought no peace in Sumy either, the city to which we continued our journey the next day; its university had also become the target of Russian attacks. Fortunately, in this case, the losses were only material.
The hallways of the damaged building, bustling with volunteers hurrying to cover windows and clear debris, are incredibly familiar. An ordinary university, not at all a military target, is now in ruins.
Karolyna, a volunteer currently living in the United Kingdom, was on vacation in her hometown when the attack occurred. She herself had walked those same university halls a few years ago as a student. In the chaos of recent events, her optimism was evident; she told me that everything is fine when only buildings are affected by bombings, not people.
Such bombings seem to be a daily occurrence in Sumy, according to Oleksyi, another volunteer who told me that explosions are heard day and night, and because the city is small, everyone hears them.
Even though the recent attacks don’t make sense from a military perspective, Russia is likely retaliating for the Ukrainians' incursion into Kursk.
We decided to head toward the border with Russia to see just how dangerous that area is. The Ukrainians control more than 1,000 square kilometers they have captured in the Kursk border region in Russia. The incursion was a strategic one, with Ukrainian civilians having no access to this territory. On the way to the Russian border, I was warned that the risk of attacks is extremely high. However, these territories feel like the end of the world; traffic is almost exclusively military, although civilians still live in these villages.
Here, small rural communities are attacked daily. Peaceful people live in fear, knowing that peace is still far away.
With the GPS jammed and unusable, we set off again, still following the traces of the attacks, as is life in Ukraine in general. Traveling through areas under temporary Russian occupation reveals incredible stories. Stories of loss, of violence, of courage, but also of fear. Stories that are now writing the history future generations will read.
