Every day at 4 am, Denis Naoumov, 33, meets a handful of volunteers from the Ukrainian NGO Proliska in a service station at the exit of Soumy. Proliska (“snowdown” in Ukrainian) specializes in the evacuation of civilians in danger of death in bombed areas.
This March 22, two minibuses take the road to Krasnopillia, a large town which had 7,000 inhabitants before the Russian invasion on a large scale, and has only 300 today. It takes about an hour to join Krasnopillia, who has been systematically bombed for a week by Russian aviation, after Vladimir Putin gave the order to create a “Tampon zone” on the Ukrainian side of the border.
The Soumy region, in northeast of Ukraine, faces the Russian region of Koursk, whose Ukrainian armed forces (FAU) have occupied a small part around the city of Sudja since August 6, 2024. Pushed by Russian and North Korean forces digitally superior, the FAU would only control 80 km2 of Russian territory.
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Source: Lemonde