Every day at 4 am, Denis Naoumov, 33, meets a handful of volunteers from the Ukrainian NGO Proliska at a service station just outside Sumy. Proliska ("Snowdrop" in Ukrainian) specializes in evacuating civilians facing mortal danger in bombed areas.
On Saturday, March 22, two minibusses set off for Krasnopillya, a town that had 7,000 inhabitants before the large-scale Russian invasion but now has just 300. It takes about an hour to reach Krasnopillya, which has been systematically bombed for the past week by Russian airstrikes after President Vladimir Putin ordered the creation of a "buffer zone" on the Ukrainian side of the border.
The Sumy region, in northeastern Ukraine, borders Russia's Kursk region. Since August 6, 2024, Ukrainian forces had occupied a small area near the town of Sudzha. However, outnumbered by Russian and North Korean forces, the Ukrainians are now believed to control only 80 square kilometers of Russian territory.
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