Residents weigh their chances as Russian troops approach Ukrainian city
"I keep asking them to leave," Solomko said on Friday, standing in front of a concrete air raid shelter that had been installed in the street to protect people from Russian drone and missile attacks that have grown in intensity.
For now, he said, his parents are not budging. But he added: "If the situation gets worse, there is no discussion: we will have to leave."
Sumy, a city of around 250,000 people, is located just 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the border with Russia. It was briefly encircled by Russian forces at the start of 2022 when they launched their full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russian forces soon pulled out and since then, despite its proximity to the border, Sumy has been relatively quiet, as the focus of the Russian fighting has been further east and south in areas Moscow claims as its own without having full control.
However, that changed earlier this year when Russian forces pushed across the Ukraine-Russian border. Since the start of June, their advance has accelerated. Displaced people from outlying villages have been given refuge in public buildings.
The Russian advance also means the city is now within range of their artillery. On June 3, four people were killed and nearly 30 were injured when a Russian short-range battlefield rocket landed in the centre of Sumy.
Olha Kalchenko, a 29-year-old on maternity leave from her job as an accountant, said the question of whether to stay or leave was now a major topic of debate among her social circle.
"It is a bit scary," she said as she pushed her seven-month-old daughter, Oleksandra, in a stroller.
"Yes, there are thoughts about leaving but there is nowhere to go, so we stay here." she said.
"As long as they (Russian troops) are still a bit further away, it is still ok to live here. But if they get closer we will start thinking and planning to leave, that's for sure. At least me and the baby."
But another resident, Sergiy Petrakov, 63, said he would stay put in Sumy, even if Russian forces reached the city limits.
He said he trusted Ukraine's armed forces to push back the Russian advance, and would be willing to help build barricades and man checkpoints, adding: "We shall overcome, I think."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
7 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Russia issues warning to West as it pulls out of missile treaty
Russia has formerly pulled out of a treaty prohibiting the deployment of short and medium-range nuclear missiles, warning the West to 'expect further steps'. As missiles continued to rain down on Ukraine, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's former president, blamed Nato countries for their withdrawal from the Cold War-era agreement. Medvedev, who has been exchanging barbs on social media with Donald Trump, made his comments after Russia's foreign ministry said Moscow no longer considered itself bound by the moratorium on the deployment of short and medium-range nuclear missiles. 'The Russian foreign ministry's statement on the withdrawal of the moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles is the result of Nato countries' anti-Russian policy,' Medvedev posted in English on X. 'This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps.' Medvedev, who now serves as deputy head of Russia's powerful Security Council, did not elaborate. The US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in 2019, citing Russian non-compliance. Russia later said it would not deploy such weapons provided that Washington did not do so. However, Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, signalled last December that Moscow would respond to what he called 'destabilising actions' by the US and Nato. 'Since the situation is developing towards the actual deployment of US-made land-based medium and short-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, the Russian foreign ministry notes that the conditions for maintaining a unilateral moratorium on the deployment of similar weapons have disappeared,' the ministry said in a statement. The INF treaty, signed in 1987 by Mikhail Gorbachev, the then Soviet leader and Ronald Reagan, the US president, eliminated an entire class of weapons – ground-launched missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometres (311 to 3,418 miles). Medvedev, seen initially in the West as a potential moderate and reformer, has become one of the most hawkish senior officials on foreign policy in Moscow. Mr Trump last Friday said he had ordered two nuclear submarines to be moved to 'the appropriate regions' in response to remarks from Medvedev about the risk of war between the nuclear-armed adversaries. Overnight, Russian strikes hit a railway station in eastern Ukraine, killing a mechanic and wounding four workers, the national rail company said. 'Russian terrorists inflicted a massive strike on the railway infrastructure of Lozova,' Ukrainian Railways said in a Telegram post. 'A duty mechanic of one of the units was killed, four more railway workers were wounded. All the wounded are receiving necessary medical care.' Several trains have been rerouted, it added. Lozova's mayor said two children were among the wounded and residential quarters had been damaged. 'Lozova has survived the most massive attack since the beginning of the war,' Sergiy Zelensky said in a Facebook post. Two people were also wounded in a separate Russian drone attack on Zaporizhzhia, the region's military administration said. Ukraine's air force meanwhile said air defence units had downed 29 Iranian-made Shahed drones overnight in the north and east of the country. It comes as a deadline set by Mr Trump for Russia to take steps to ending the war in Ukraine or face unspecified new sanctions looms. Three rounds of peace talks in Istanbul have failed to make headway on a possible ceasefire, with the two sides appearing as far apart as ever.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Two children among wounded in Russian attack on Ukraine's Kharkiv, officials say
KYIV, Aug 5 (Reuters) - One person was killed and 10 people, including two children, were wounded early on Tuesday in Russia's largest air attack on the Ukrainian town of Lozova since the war began, officials said. The "massive strike" damaged the train station and other infrastructure in the town, a transport hub in the Kharkiv region bordering Russia, state rail operator Ukrzaliznytsia said in a statement. Photos shared by emergency services appeared to show a damaged train and rubble covering a train platform. "Critical infrastructure, apartment buildings and private homes have been damaged ... Lozova has endured the largest attack since the beginning of the war," town council head Serhiy Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Two children were wounded in the attack that left parts of the region without power and water, he added. Ukrzaliznytsia said one of its employees died and four more were injured. Emergency services said 10 people in total were injured in the attack. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia struck civilian infrastructure in Lozova with more than 25 drones, damaging a depot and a station. Ukraine's air force downed 29 of 46 drones launched by Russia across the country overnight, according to its statement on Telegram. One ballistic missile and 17 drones struck various locations, it said. Reuters could not independently verify the reports of casualties and damage. There was no immediate comment from Russia. Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
The 1939 manual that shows Trump how to wreck Russia's economy
It is unlikely that Donald Trump will tour the National Archives in Kew during his state visit to Britain next month, but if the president were to find the time, he could study the original instruction manual on how to wreck a national economy. Deep in the vaults lies Britain's Handbook of Economic Warfare, circulated on August 14 1939 and kept secret – or 'under lock and key', according to the emphatic instruction on its cover – right up until 1990. Its 52 pages, compiled on the eve of the Second World War, amount to an elegantly-written manifesto for economic havoc, filled with relevance for today's decision-makers. Perhaps most of all for Trump, who could this week punish Vladimir Putin's refusal to agree a ceasefire in Ukraine by taking what the President's supporters call a 'sledgehammer' to the Russian economy. The hammer in question would be a raft of American sanctions with one vital difference: they would be targeted not on Russia itself, but on any country that buys Putin's oil, with the aim of depriving the Kremlin of its customers and suffocating its single biggest source of revenue. The objective of these 'secondary sanctions' would be to choke Russian finances so severely that Putin would have to sue for peace in Ukraine. That goal finds its echo in said British handbook. 'The aim of economic warfare,' reads chapter one, 'is to so disorganise the enemy's economy as to prevent him from carrying on the war'. This amounts to a 'military operation, comparable to the operations of the three services, in that its object is the defeat of the enemy.' The 'weapons' include 'interference with trade' and 'withholding financial, shipping and insurance facilities.' The word 'sanctions' does not appear in the handbook; instead chapter two proposes a 'statutory list' of 'firms' and 'vessels' with which all trade and any contact would be banned. Just as Trump wants to compel other countries to stop buying Russian oil, so the handbook stresses the necessity of 'persuading or inducing neutral governments, firms and persons to refrain from transactions advantageous to the enemy.' Indeed, such is the text's relevance that it is now said to be back in vogue in Whitehall. Deputy National Security Adviser Jonathan Black has reportedly pointed colleagues towards the handbook in recent months, claiming it will help guide them as Britain deals with threats from the likes of Putin's Russia. Trump must now decide whether secondary sanctions are the right tool of persuasion even though America has used them only sparingly in the past, mainly against Iran, and no other Western country has resorted to them at all. Even the handbook, written when war was imminent, stops short of recommending them. On the surface, the president and his allies seem unrestrained. Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator representing South Carolina, has introduced a bill that would impose 500 per cent tariffs on any country buying Russian 'petroleum products', describing this as a 'sledgehammer available to President Trump to end this war' and a sanction of 'bone-breaking' power. Ukraine certainly hopes so. On Sunday, one of President Zelensky's key advisers, Andriy Yermak, said that Russia's economy was 'holding on only through the sale of energy resources' and it would be possible to 'strangle' Putin's revenues with 'secondary tariffs proposed in the USA.' On July 28, Trump said that Putin had '10 or 12 days' to accept a ceasefire in Ukraine or face unspecified consequences, a deadline that the White House later clarified would expire this Friday. Earlier, the president had threatened 'tariffs at about 100 per cent – you'd call them secondary tariffs' on any country importing Putin's oil. The biggest targets would be China and India, which buy nearly 75 per cent of Russia's seaborne oil exports. If Trump is in earnest, then the world's second and fifth biggest economies respectively will this week suffer American tariffs of 100 per cent, though there seems no immediate prospect of him endorsing Senator Graham's bill and its penalty of 500 per cent. The president is a master of bombast and empty threats, but the oil price still responded to his words by climbing above $70 per barrel. Faced with a choice between punitive US tariffs or abandoning Russian oil, China and India would probably have to choose the latter and cut Putin loose. Thanks to Russia's dependence on just two customers, that would make a big difference to Moscow's revenues. In June alone, Russia earned more than £6 billion by selling 2 million barrels of oil a day to China and 1.5 million to India. Add in exports of coal, gas and refined oil products, and Russia received a total of about £7.5 billion from the two countries in one month – representing about half of the Kremlin's global fossil fuel revenues. 'If those markets are lost, then clearly this would have a serious impact on Russia,' says Jonathan Eyal, an associate director of the Royal United Services Institute. 'But as always with the oil market, it's swings and roundabouts.' Secondary sanctions, if imposed, might be too successful for their own good. By choking off Russian oil, they could unbalance the market and cause the price to rise, damaging the world economy and forcing Trump's voters to pay more to fill up their cars. A higher price would also allow Putin to earn more from any remaining exports. Thanks to sanctions, Russian oil already sells at a discount on the market price. If that baseline was higher, then the Kremlin could raise more revenue even with the discount. And how would the sudden imposition of punitive tariffs on China square with Trump's wish to negotiate a trade deal with the world's second biggest economy? On Friday, Trump enacted a 25 per cent tariff on India in retaliation for its supposed protectionism against US exports. But he had publicly threatened an extra 'penalty' for the country's purchases of Russian oil. So far, no such 'penalty' has appeared and India's tariff is still lower than Canada's 35 per cent. Eyal points out that Trump has not yet given his backing to the Graham bill, and the president's separate announcements are 'muddying the waters', creating a 'typical Trump mess.' But there is no doubt that imposing different tariffs based on whether countries comply with America's foreign policy objectives violates World Trade Organisation rules. And deliberately placing a sovereign state under unbearable pressure to stop doing business with another sovereign state could break international law. 'As a principle, we've always argued that these measures are illegal because they effectively extend US jurisdiction to other countries,' says Eyal. Britain's Handbook of Economic Warfare from 1939 notes another familiar risk, namely that neutral countries, 'if pressed too hard', could 'throw in their lot with the enemy', just as excessive American pressure on China and India might drive them closer to Russia. Even when the Second World War was imminent, the British Government weighed the risks and decided against imposing secondary sanctions on neutral countries doing business with Nazi Germany. 'There will be no Secondary Statutory list,' says the handbook. 'That is to say, neutral traders will not be penalised merely for continuing to trade with another who has been placed on the Statutory List.' But the text stresses the importance of maintaining an artful pretence that secondary sanctions might at any moment be imposed, noting how this bluff had been highly effective during the First World War. 'The fear, which was discreetly fostered, that a Secondary Statutory List, might be enforced proved, however, extremely efficacious during the war of 1914-18,' says the handbook. 'There is evidence that some firms on the Statutory List were virtually boycotted by other firms for fear of consequences that we had no intention of permitting.' In the same way, just the possibility of America imposing secondary sanctions has already made companies in China and India and elsewhere wary of doing business with Russia. The fact that Putin must sell his oil at a discount is proof of this chilling effect. Yet Putin's incessant drone and missile attacks on Kyiv, which killed 31 people in one night last Thursday, suggest that he does not believe that Trump will go ahead with secondary sanctions against Russia's biggest economic partners. Instead, Putin's assaults on Ukrainian cities suggest that he is determined to ignore what he thinks is Trump's bluster. It will soon become clear whether Putin is right and the president is bluffing just as surely as Britain was in 1939. If not, this could be the week when Trump takes up his sledgehammer and wields it against Russia with a severity that would exceed Britain's actions against Nazi Germany in the countdown to war.
