Russian missiles hit Sumy civilians as military held ceremony, soldier says

Emergency workers dig through rubble on Monday in Sumy after the strikes. Photo / The Washington Post

Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr was sitting at a military medal ceremony in a university building basement on Sunday when two Russian ballistic missiles tore through the surrounding area.

From the hospital where his wounded stepdaughter is being held in intensive care, Oleksandr described how spraying shrapnel struck passing civilians and the city streets were engulfed in flames.

While the soldiers, including fellow troops from his 117th Brigade, sat safely underground waiting for the all clear, Oleksandr’s wife – who had been walking on the street with their children – used her hand to plug their 6-year-old’s shrapnel wound as the girl’s lung filled with blood, he said.

The Russian missile attack on the centre of this crowded city on Palm Sunday killed 35 people and wounded more than 100 others, almost all of them civilians, according to local authorities. The carnage enraged Ukraine, supporting Ukrainians’ views that Russia remains intent on killing them and demolishing their cities even as President Donald Trump’s negotiators make repeated visits to Moscow, hoping the Kremlin will agree to a deal.

The strikes came just two days after Trump envoy Steve Witkoff flew to Moscow for an hours-long meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump later told reporters he understood the attack on Sumy to have been a “mistake,” adding to Ukrainian distrust in Washington’s views of the war.

But many in this grieving city, including Oleksandr, 38, have also directed their fury at the organisers of the military medal ceremony, which may have been the target of the Russian strikes. In an hour-long interview, Oleksandr, whom The Washington Post is identifying only by first name in keeping with military rules and to avoid retribution from higher command, said that plans for the wartime pageantry probably attracted Russia’s attention.

Under international law, both sides must take measures to avoid civilian harm. Russia’s launch of ballistic missiles into a busy intersection in a major city amounted to the highest number of civilian casualties in a single incident in Ukraine so far this year. However, the law also requires Ukraine to avoid placing military targets in heavily populated civilian areas.

That arrangement can prove extraordinarily complicated in Ukraine as troops defend civilian areas from assault, but events such as medal ceremonies, which Russia has targeted in the past, are not vital defensive positions.

Oleksandr said holding the event in Sumy was unnecessary and irresponsible. The city sits just 18 miles from the Russian border, lacks adequate air defences and comes under regular attack. Russians may have intercepted communications or been informed by a local collaborator about the plans.

Oleksandr had recently been fighting just inside the Russian region of Belgorod and was annoyed to be called home for the ceremony. Soldiers were needed on the battlefield, he said, not in a basement in the centre of Sumy.

“I don’t need these medals or these papers,” he said from the children’s hospital where his stepdaughter, Elina, had shrapnel and bone removed from her lung. “I want to kill all Russian soldiers and go home to my civilian life.”

“We’re fighting for Ukraine,” he added. “For me, Ukraine is that little girl in her hospital bed. It’s the woman standing next to her.”

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the head of Ukraine’s regional military administration, Volodymyr Artiukh. He acknowledged his presence at the ceremony to Ukraine’s national broadcaster but denied organising it. Oleksandr said Artiukh was “100% responsible” for the deaths and injuries caused by the strikes. Artiukh did not respond to a request for comment.

The Ukrainian Government has not publicly acknowledged that there was a ceremony but has instead focused on the large number of civilian casualties – which Post reporting confirmed – including people headed to church services.

Russia, meanwhile, has claimed without evidence that the attack killed more than 60 Ukrainian troops. Sumy’s hospitals and cemeteries, newly filled with civilians, tell a different story. Russia’s Defence Ministry has not responded to queries about the civilian casualties.

Spring comes to Sumy

It was the first warm spring weekend of the year, and Sumy’s downtown – home to a large community centre and the state university – was filled with locals enjoying a reprieve from winter.

Congregants were celebrating Palm Sunday. Children were preparing to put on a play. Residents strolled the streets and others boarded bus No 63, heading to church, picnics and family visits. And in a basement, soldiers, commanders and Artiukh had discreetly gathered for a ceremony that Oleksandr said began at 10am.

Soon after 10am, the first missile hit, shattering the community centre’s glass atrium and smashing through the ground floor and into the basement, where the children’s play was about to begin. Outside, witnesses said, chaos broke out as people scrambled for shelter. Stunned, Ivan Marunchak and Mykhailo Zubakiev, both 13, turned toward the scene. Ivan’s phone rang and his mother, Tetiana, frantically asked if he was okay.

Then came the second missile, tearing through the roof of a university building and sending Ivan’s phone flying from his hand. The boys were thrown to the ground. Ivan, his leg numb, tried to drag himself up a flight of steps to shelter. He saw Mykhailo running for help, but his friend wouldn’t get far – he had taken shrapnel to the stomach.

On the red city bus that had been passing by, Kyrylo Ilyashenko, also 13, waited on the floor for glass to stop raining down on his head. The driver was already dead. Bodies lay slumped in seats and on the floor. He knew his mom was trapped somewhere in that mess. He crawled through a window and – working on pure adrenaline and years of wrestling training – ripped the bus door open from the outside with his bare hands. He helped pull the living to safety, including his mom, Marina, whose face and white puffy coat were drenched in blood.

Oleksandr rushed up from the basement and called his wife, Viktoria, as he took in the disaster outside. She answered screaming “Elina is 300!” – using the military code for wounded to describe their daughter. They were already en route to the hospital, she said.

As they always do, the streets quickly filled with helpers: medics, soldiers, passersby. The wounded were rushed to hospitals. The dead were first covered with foil blankets, then moved into bags.

The attack happened on Sumy's first warm spring weekend of the year. Photo / The Washington Post

Ivan’s and Mykhailo’s parents were running through the streets in a frantic search. Both boys ended up at the same hospital for surgery – Ivan on his leg and Mykhailo on his stomach.

It wasn’t until Tuesday morning that Mykhailo opened his blue-gray eyes. His first question was about Ivan, who was recovering downstairs.

Mykhailo’s mother, Alla Zubakieva, said she felt scared and stressed for her son and his friend but also furious at Artiukh and other officials for planning a medal ceremony in the city. “Today I found out he’s been fired, and thank God,” she said of Artiukh. “I’m not just angry at the Russians – I also find the Government responsible.”

‘It was a holiday’

In a hospital across town, wounded adults were scattered everywhere, recovering from surgery days after the strike. In one lay Nataliya Nartayeva, 66, whose left arm was blown off in the attack. When asked whether she would leave Sumy, she raised her right arm in defiance and said she will not. “We will always win,” she said.

In another room, Viktor Vovtenko, a security guard at the university physics building, was flat on his back. He was rushing to the shelter after the first strike when the second threw him to the floor, breaking his spine. Now he can’t feel his legs. His family stayed in Sumy in hopes a ceasefire might pan out. When asked what message he had for Trump after the latest attack, he lifted his hand over the edge of his hospital bed and raised his middle finger in the air.

In another room, Lyudmila, 62, lay under her sheets and wept. Her curly grey hair had been shaved, her head wrapped in white bandages after a surgery to remove a hematoma in her brain. “My husband died in the bus,” she said quietly. “You can’t imagine what kind of hell it is.”

The couple had been on their way to church for Palm Sunday. “It was a holiday – a special day,” she said. She sat near the bus window, and her husband, Mykola, 60, a truck driver, stood next to her. After the blasts, everything was echoing as she dug through bodies on the floor. She found Mykola already dead. Emergency workers dragged her to the street, then to the hospital. “I don’t want to live right now,” she said, tears streaming. “I want the entire world to know what’s happening in Sumy.”

Mykola’s funeral would be on Wednesday, she said, but doctors would not allow her to go.

So many people died in the strikes that several funerals have happened in Sumy each day this week. Mourners have gathered again and again in black at churches, in cemeteries and by the attack site to lay flowers and stuffed toys in honour of the dead. The risk of the next attack is constant. On Monday morning, locals paused cleaning the streets to look up in fear as a Russian drone buzzed overhead.

On Wednesday morning, a crowd gathered to bury Nataliya and Mykola Martynenko and their 11-year-old son, Maksym – a whole family eliminated in an instant on their way to church three days before.

As their bodies were displayed in front of the family’s village house, a double rainbow appeared in the sky. The crowd looked up. “A rainbow around the sun. It’s a sign,” one woman said.

Then another air raid alert: a ballistic missile threat. Telegram channels warned civilians to take cover. A fighter jet flew overhead. The crowd dispersed.