The Sumy that did not surrender

Sumy Oblast shares 564 km of border with Russia, and on the morning of 24 February columns crossed it in several places at once. By about half past one in the afternoon Russian vehicles were seen near Bezdryk, Holovashivka and Postolne, and soon fighting began at the city's northern and western entrances.

The fiercest fighting was on Kondratieva Street, by the cadet school and the artillery school that locals call "Artiaha". The 27th Artillery Brigade was based there. The Russians tried several times to break through to the base and each time fell back. Six defenders were killed by the school that day. The battle for the base went on for three days, and burnt-out Russian vehicles were left at its gates.

There were almost no regular troops in the city: a battalion group of the 81st Airmobile Brigade soon moved on to Lebedyn. Sumy was held by territorial defence, still being formed, and by thousands of volunteers. Weapons were handed out from lists, then simply given away. Petrol bombs were made by the thousand in garages and at filling stations. People brought bottles, rags, food and medicine. Students, business owners and bartenders became fighters overnight.

The main Russian column stretched about seven kilometres along Kharkivska Street, from the Khimprom plant to the Sadko fountain, and went around the city towards Kyiv. Captured documents showed a plan to reach the capital in three to five days. On some days there were up to 10,000 Russian military vehicles in the oblast, and the longest column ran for 200 km.

Having failed to take Sumy on the move, the Russians surrounded it and went on. Now territorial defence fought from ambush. On 26 February a convoy of fuel trucks was destroyed on the Kursk highway. On 27 February an armoured carrier and two soldiers were captured at Sumy-Tovarna station, and three tank crewmen in the woods near Tokari, who said they had thought they were on an exercise.

The price was high. On 1 March five fighters were killed near Syrovatka, including commander Oleksandr Korzhaiev. On 7 March near Nyzhnia Syrovatka the Russians killed four unarmed territorial defence scouts: Heorhii Tsedik, Oleksandr Bieliavskyi, Roman Kuklenko and Yevhen Stepanenko. In civilian life they were a businessman, bank staff and a bartender. They are buried in the Alley of Heroes at the Central Cemetery.

On the evening of 7 March a Russian aircraft dropped a bomb on a residential area on Romenska Street. Twenty-two people were killed, three of them children. In one destroyed house an entire family of nine died. By 15 March territorial defence had counted more than a hundred bombardments of the city and its outskirts, and on 21 March a strike on Sumykhimprom caused an ammonia leak.

People held on to each other. Neighbours in basements became friends, a café run by a barista from Donetsk stayed open from day one, and customers asked for their coffee stronger. A volunteer hub opened in the centre in the first hours, and the first aid truck was brought into the city in early March along dirt roads only locals knew.

Okhtyrka and Trostianets

Okhtyrka had the hardest time in the first weeks. On 25 February an Uragan rocket with cluster munitions hit the Sonechko kindergarten where people were sheltering, killing three, including a child. The battle for the town lasted four days; Okhtyrka held but lost its city hall, its 1914 House of Culture and its combined heat and power plant. Okhtyrka was among the first towns to be named a Hero City.

Russian forces occupied Trostianets on 1 March and held it for 31 days. Tanks shelled the town hospital, and the occupiers set up headquarters at the station. While the town was occupied, Ukrainian forces struck columns around it: on 17 March an entire Russian column was destroyed near Trostianets.

For the first week of the encirclement Sumy had no safe way out: bridges were blown, Russian columns stood on the highways and any car on the road risked being shelled. People slept in basements and shelters, neighbours shared water and food, and volunteers took medicine to the elderly.

8 March: the first corridor

After several failed agreements, the first humanitarian corridor opened on 8 March: Sumy – Holubivka – Lokhvytsia – Lubny – Poltava. Pregnant women, mothers with children, older and disabled people went first. About 5,000 people and more than a thousand cars left that day. There were fewer buses than planned because some drivers refused to go. The convoy stopped three times to let Russian vehicles pass, and nobody knew whether it would be fired on.

Hundreds of foreign students trapped by destroyed bridges left alongside residents. The Indian students alone numbered about 700: they reached Poltava, and on 11 March 674 Indian citizens flew home on three flights from Rzeszów in Poland.

9–18 March: tens of thousands

The corridors worked again on 9 and 10 March. Over those two days, according to Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, more than 60,000 people left Sumy, Trostianets and Krasnopillia. New routes for the oblast were agreed on 18 March. Evacuation buses and convoys of private cars became a familiar sight on the roads out of the city.

The borderland: an evacuation that never ends

After the oblast was liberated, evacuation did not stop; it moved to the border. By 2022 a 25 km security zone had been set up along it. In August 2024, after the Kursk operation began, compulsory evacuation was declared in 28 villages, about 20,000 people. In spring 2025, during the Russian offensive, it covered more than 200 settlements and 86,000 residents, more than 52,000 of whom left. By 2026, 78 villages in Sumy Oblast had emptied completely.

People are taken out by emergency service rescuers, police, volunteers and local communities, often under shelling and drones. In Sumy and neighbouring regions, resilience points, aid hubs and support centres help the displaced.

On 26 March the 93rd "Kholodnyi Yar" Brigade, together with territorial defence and local partisans, liberated Trostianets, which the Kantemirovskaya tank division had held for a month. During 31 days of occupation 142 Russian vehicles had been destroyed there, and people had been tortured in the basements of the station. Boromlia and Steblianky were freed the same day, and on 27 March the Russians left the villages closest to Sumy, blowing up a bridge over the Psel behind them.

On 4 April regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytskyi announced that the occupiers no longer held a single settlement in the oblast, and on 8 April the last units left Sumy Oblast. Sumy never surrendered. The occupation left behind mined fields and more than 120 civilian dead in the first six weeks alone.

After liberation the war did not leave; it moved to the border. In the summer of 2022 a 25 km security zone was set up along it where children study online only. Shelling of border communities became daily, with some days bringing more than twenty attacks and some months more than 350.

On 3 July 2023 Shahed drones hit the centre of Sumy, striking the SBU building, an administrative building and blocks of flats. Two people were killed and nineteen injured.

On 6 August 2024 Ukrainian forces crossed from Sumy Oblast into Russia's Kursk region. The answer was even harsher strikes on Sumy. By 9 August compulsory evacuation was declared in 28 border villages, and about 20,000 people had to leave.

On 28 September drones struck a medical centre twice, the second time during the evacuation of patients, killing at least nine. On 17 November a missile hit a residential area in the centre, killing 12 people, two of them children, and injuring 84. Over 2024 the oblast endured almost 19,000 attacks and about 57,000 explosions.

On 13 April 2025, Palm Sunday, at about 10:20 two Iskander-M ballistic missiles exploded in central Sumy, one of them by the SumDU congress centre. People were walking to church with willow branches and riding a trolleybus. Thirty-five were killed, two of them children, and more than 120 wounded. Ukraine said cluster munitions were used, which the US ambassador confirmed. Germany's chancellor called it a war crime. Ukraine has identified eight Russian officers responsible. Earlier, on the night of 30 January, a strike on a block of flats had killed 11 people.

In spring the Russians went on the offensive in Sumy Oblast. In May they took more than 400 km², seized Kindrativka and pressed on Yunakivka and Andriivka. According to the President, about 50,000 troops were massed near Sumy. Evacuation covered more than 200 settlements, and air-raid alerts lasted 14–15 hours a day. On 26 June Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi said the offensive had been stopped.

On 30 September 2025 Decree No. 720/2025 named Sumy and Trostianets Hero Cities of Ukraine. In December, after strikes on the power grid, hundreds of thousands of consumers in the oblast lost electricity. In late 2025 Sumy opened its first underground school, and by September 2026 the oblast had five, with 1,360 places where 1,944 pupils study in person in shifts.

The front line runs roughly 20 km from the city, near Yunakivka, Yablunivka and Kindrativka, and for more than a year the Russians have not managed to get closer. In autumn 2026 Ukrainian forces even won back some ground north of Sumy. But the city is attacked every day by drones, guided bombs and missiles.

On 4 April 2026 a drone hit a 16-storey block, injuring 11 people. On 3 July six guided bombs fell on a central street, killing four people, including a five-year-old girl and her mother. On 4 August two sisters aged five and ten were pulled from the rubble of their home. On 8 September a drone struck a train in Sumy Oblast, then hit again when rescuers arrived. On 9 September a drone hit a shopping centre, killing two 21-year-olds. Trains no longer reach Sumy and stop at Konotop.

In four years of full-scale war more than 570 civilians have been killed in Sumy Oblast, about 30 of them children, and nearly 2,500 injured. More than 13,000 homes and 335 educational buildings have been destroyed or damaged, and 78 villages have emptied completely. And still Sumy works: cafés open, children go to underground schools, the theatre plays in shelters, and the hospitals take in more patients than ever.

In the ten months from 1 January to 31 October 2025 the Sumy hromada was attacked 543 times, four times as often as in all of 2024: 455 drone attacks, 38 guided bombs, 28 rocket-launcher strikes, 16 missiles and 6 artillery attacks. 72 people were killed and 434 injured. 245 high-rises, 494 private houses (25 destroyed) and more than 300 other buildings were damaged. The worst month was August, with 111 attacks.

In 2026 the weapons changed: the city is regularly hit by salvos of 3–8 guided bombs, jet-powered drones and fibre-optic FPV drones, and since June artillery has reached the city. By 7 October 2026, 121 people had been killed in the oblast's communities under compulsory evacuation, and more than 34,000 people, including 436 children, still live in those zones.

Days of mourning

The Sumy hromada declared mourning on 14–15 March, 9 September, 29–30 September, 18–19 and 23 November 2024; 30–31 January, 14–16 April, 7–8 May, 15 May and 3–4 June 2025; and 7 May, 4 July, 16 July, 5 August and 10 September 2026. On 13 April 2026, the first anniversary of Palm Sunday, the oblast held a day of remembrance.

Rebuilding

The city rebuilds what it can. In March 2026 work began on the block of flats at 68A Heroiv Krut, wrecked on 30 January 2025: the frame is being strengthened first, and residents receive rent compensation. Sumy State University, using donations, is re-roofing its congress centre and has replaced dozens of windows after Palm Sunday. The Optima hotel reopened 57 rooms after a drone strike. Children study in underground schools, and after every strike energy workers bring back power and water.

On 4 November 2023, opposite the artillery school and next to the 27th Brigade memorial, an installation by sculptor Andrii Fedchenko was unveiled: a concrete outline of Sumy Oblast with soldiers' silhouettes and the date of the invasion. Since 2014 the Central Cemetery has had an Alley of Glory, where those killed in 2022 also lie. In October 2024 another alley opened by a church, with 29 portraits of fallen soldiers of the 155th battalion.

The best tribute is to know these names and dates, and to come to Sumy when it is safe.