More than 100 residents from Russia’s Kursk region, including some who were injured, have fled to Sumy, a Ukrainian city bordering Russia’s Kursk region.
The evacuation followed a deadly strike on a nursing home in Sudzha, a town under Ukrainian control.
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Journalists from The Washington Post said they have spoken with over 40 evacuees now staying in a hospital and shelter in Sumy. Many of them are elderly.
Kursk activist Lyubov Prilutskaya, in an interview with the Russian news outlet “Agency,” said that around 110 evacuees are currently based in Sumy, many of whom were previously housed in the Sudzha nursing home.
A few others fled from the nearby village of Kazachya Loknya, which is under Ukrainian control, she said.
She added that relatives of the evacuees in Russia hope they “will be able to return home via Belarus,” but their fate depends on efforts by Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatiana Moskalkova.
The perpetrator of the Feb. 1 attack on the Sudzha nursing home remains disputed. Kyiv said Russian aircraft dropped an aerial bomb on the site, while Russia’s Defense Ministry blamed it on Ukrainian missiles fired from Sumy.
Kursk activist Vladimir Sinelnikov, cited by the Astra Telegram channel on Feb. 1, said Russian Aerospace Forces dropped a bomb on the nursing home – formerly a boarding school – used to house elderly and bedridden Russian residents in Sudzha.
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He said the building was virtually destroyed, and more than 90 residents, unable to be evacuated after Ukraine’s August incursion, were trapped under the rubble.
Shortly afterward, the press officer of the Ukrainian Ground Forces commander in Kursk, Alexey Dmytrashkivskyi, said Russia launched the attack and issued a statement on Facebook.
“Today [Feb. 1] at 17:54 Kyiv time, [the] Russian Armed Forces finally struck the boarding school in the city of Sudzha. Ninety-five people were under the rubble. Moans and screams of people can be heard from under the rubble. Let me remind you that most of them are elderly and bedridden,” the statement says.
Russia has not given a toll for the strike but accused Kyiv of targeting the school in a “crime that has no forgiveness and no statute of limitations.”
