lOn AST weekend, Alla Shyrshonkova took a 62 bus on a trip to a cottage near the Ukrainian city of Sumy. It was a warm spring day. “I was sitting with my friends and drinking tea. The birds were singing. The weather was beautiful. It was great,” she recalls.
“The bus was packed. There was no one unreserved seating. People were standing. Some people went to church for Palm Sunday. There were families with children.”
She could hear her loudly as she reached the city centre. Two minutes later, the bus headed down Petropabrivuska Street and there was a second explosion. “The explosion was in front of me, so I didn’t see it. I just heard it. I was sitting behind the driver. I held his back to him. When I heard the noise, I covered my head with my hands and dug it.”
She then said, “The rocks, the glass, and everything flew.” Shilchonkova raised his head. Blood was gushing out of her arms “like a fountain.” “I saw the cars sucking fire and smoke. People were lying at my feet. I told them: “Wake up, wake up.” They were silent. ”
The conductor, whose driver’s name is “Kolya,” did not respond. The passengers tried to climb through the window. Eventually, the teenager opened the door and she stumbled.
Smie’s double strike was the bloodiest moment of the year in Russia’s murder war against Ukraine. Iskander Ballistic Missiles carried a fatal ammunition cluster that emits waves of sh shotguns. Thirty-five people were killed.
Two of the victims buried last week were 11 and 7 year old children. Sami residents left toys where they died, including bears, hippos, toy cars, and soccer.
Shyrshonkova was one of the 129 injured. They have 15 children. As Tetyana, a nurse at Sumy’s General Hospital, said, some people hover “between life and death.” observer. The first missile crashed into the university’s Congress Center, plunging into a glass atrium and an underground theatre. The second turned the city into a vision of hell, with a girl crying on the ground and covered in blood.
War appears to be farther than ever from a peaceful resolution. On Friday, Donald Trump showed he was ready to “take a pass” to mediate the agreement, unless both parties reach a deal “very soon.”
More than a month ago, Ukraine accepted the US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire. Russia did not. Since then, it has escalated empirically a bombing campaign on civilians and infrastructure, Hit Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipro.
As many have predicted, Trump’s negotiation strategy was to support Russia. He effectively ended military aid to Kiev, but falsely accusing Voldimia Zelensky and Joe Biden of “starting” the war.
Moscow is not under similar pressure. Trump downplayed Sumi’s strike last weekend and called it a “mistake.” His special envoy, Steve Witkoff, who met European leaders on Thursday, said misinformation about the Parrot Kremlin.
Speaking from the hospital, the survivors expressed their anger at the US president, accusing him of negligence and bewildered partisanship. “What happened in Smee is obviously scary. There’s nothing else,” Silchonkova said. “Trump is basically supportive of Russia.
“I want him to come to Ukraine and see what he loves Puiro [a slang term for Putin, meaning prick] I’m doing it. I want Trump to help us on the same level as Joe Biden. ”
Another injured survivor, 72, Hennady Smorialov, said the Russians were genocide. “They are trying to destroy all Ukrainians. They hate us. Putin says we are not people.
“They promote the concept of russkiy mir Or the “Russian World.” It means conquering everywhere. ”
Smoriolov was studying in Moscow in the 1980s, and he HokuhoruUkrainians’ light rogative terms. “Prejudice is widespread,” he noted.
He was sitting on the 62 bus and went to town to wake up for his wife Anna. After the first strike, the bus stopped outside the Smee State University Institute of Applied Physics. The sh shotgun from the second missile hit his lungs and head. “There was a strong shock wave. I couldn’t see inside. The smoke was like fog and was very thick.”
The woman lay motionless at her feet. “I lost strength and fell on the bus,” he recalled.
A volunteer grabbed Smoriarov with the collar of his brown leather jacket and dragged him onto the pavement.
The explosion blew wooden doors and glass from 19th-century laboratories, sending pieces into the garden and flower beds. The clock on the quartz wall on the first floor stopped at an instant of shock: 10:20am to 40am. Crossing the road, huge holes were goued into a white painted economics and business faculty building.
Another injured survivor, Victor Votenko, said Smie was in the fourth year of the war. “We were hit with so many attacks with Shahed drones and missiles,” he said. “The air raids won’t stop.”
The city, the main military hub, is located within 20 miles of Russia. From here, Ukrainian forces launched a surprising mini-invasion of Russia’s nearby Kursk region in August last year. They retreated in March. The battle continues in a village along the border where Ukrainian troops hold checks for Russian territory.
Voitenko works as a security guard at the Institute of Physics. He was in the foyer when Iskander fell for the second time. A metal fragment hit him on his spine. “I couldn’t feel my feet. I called my wife and she contacted me in five minutes. The police then took me to a safe place,” he said.
Lieing in the hospital bed, Votenko said it was unclear if he would walk again: “It’s in God’s hands. My surgery went well. The doctor says he can’t guarantee anything.”
Voitenko, 56, previously worked as a builder and a “liquidator.” This is a member of the cleanup crew sent to the nuclear power plant in Chornobyl after the disaster in 1986.
He said the Kremlin is obsessed with reckless imperialism. “We lived well before the war. We had everything. I have a beautiful wife, an 11-year-old daughter and two cars.”
Bus driver Mikola Leon was killed in Palm Sunday along with most of his passengers – he said he was a distant relative.
Shyrshonkova spoke observer From the adjacent hospital room. She left her survival to a class she attended as a Soviet high school girl in the 1950s.
“We had a lesson in civil defense. The teachers said capitalism is bad. They also explained what to do in the case of a nuclear attack. We were taught to close our mouths and cover our heads and eyes.
“When I heard the blast on Sunday, it came back to me. A few instincts took over,” she said.
When she left the hospital, Shilshonkova said she wanted to visit her dacha. “I planted tomatoes and peppers on my balcony. I want to see them grow.”
Luke Harding Invasion: the bloody war in Russia and the battle for Ukraine’s survival, Orwell awardPublished by Guardian Faber
