Otherwise occupied

Life in Ukrainian-occupied Russia six months after Kyiv’s surprise incursion into the Kursk region

When a missile reduced a boarding school to rubble in the Ukrainian-occupied town of Sudzha in Russia’s southwestern Kursk region on 1 February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed Russia for the attack, only for the Russian Defence Ministry to accuse the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) of responsibility for the atrocity.

The boarding school became a hub for distributing humanitarian aid to civilians following the AFU’s incursion into Russian territory in August, and, by the time the missile struck, it was being used to house elderly people and families that had been left homeless by the fighting.

With over 2,000 Russian civilians still believed to be living in the occupied Sudzha district, Novaya Gazeta Europe spoke to relatives of those who had been living in the boarding school to ask what they knew about their day-to-day lives under Ukrainian occupation and the role played by the boarding school since August.

“There is no concentration camp or anything of the sort. The Ukrainians came and brought help with them.”

Immediately after the boarding school missile strike, Sofia saw a post on pro-war Telegram channel Rybar that linked to a September statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry, which claimed that the AFU were running a concentration camp in a bombed out boarding school in the town of Sudzha where local residents were “being held at gunpoint”.

Sofia, whom I found through other acquaintances in Sudzha, was angered by the message. “There is no concentration camp or anything of the sort. The Ukrainians came and brought help with them.”

Sofia left Sudzha when the war began, but her parents and brother are still there, and until recently her parents were living in the boarding school. She recalls them saying in August that they could sense something was going to happen and that shelling had intensified, shortly after which she lost contact with them when the AFU launched its incursion into the Kursk region on 6 August.

That day, her brother Alexander was injured when he came under fire while on his way to the local hospital where he worked as a doctor. The AFU took him to the boarding school, where Ukrainian doctors had already begun arriving to provide medical care. Sofia’s parents went to join him, which is how she first heard of the boarding school.

Local children had attended the school since the Russian invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in 2022, but the school had been empty when the AFU incursion began as it took place during the summer holidays. Under the Ukrainian occupation, local residents with nowhere else to go began to move into the building.

A Soviet-era three-storey red-brick building with a bomb shelter in the basement, the boarding school, like the rest of Sudzha, had been left without electricity or running water since August. There was also no heating, so those staying at the boarding school used the small stoves distributed by the AFU to keep warm. Home-made stove pipes protruded from the windows to act as chimneys. Broken window panes were replaced with plywood for insulation, with holes for the stove pipes cut into them.

The word “people” had been painted on the building’s exterior in the hopes that the military would want to avoid shelling civilians, even though such measures are of little use when it comes to artillery.

According to Sofia, Ukrainian troops would bring medicines and other humanitarian aid to the boarding school, and locals were able to go there if they needed medicine, food or water. Sometimes doctors would come from Ukraine to examine the sick and wounded. At other times, local doctors who had stayed in the district after the incursion would be on duty instead.

“There was no water, nothing to drink, no food supply — nothing. The Ukrainians brought everything.”

After the looting of local shops by residents in search of food and water, the AFU began providing Sudzha with aid and delivering food and water to local residents, Sofia recalls. Once delivery of aid to the boarding school was regular, residents living nearby began going there for food rather than waiting for it to be distributed, though those living farther away had no choice but to wait.

“My mum says: ‘We’d be lost without the Ukrainians.’ It was so hot, and the river is far away and there was no running water. The water supply, the toilet — nothing worked. There wasn’t a single well or standpipe. There was no water, nothing to drink, no food supply — nothing. The Ukrainians brought everything,” Sofia explains.

Evacuation

Husband and wife Sergey and Natalia lived in the boarding school’s basement. Sergey was the boarding school janitor, while Natalia, a qualified medic, administered injections and distributed medication. When civilians were evacuated via the Ukrainian city of Sumy in November, one woman carried a letter with her that Natalia had written to her daughter.

“I’m sorry we didn’t listen and go with you and now we’ve ended up in this mayhem. But don’t you worry. Stay strong. We are fine. It’s warm in our room, as your dad heats it by using the stoves, I give injections to anyone who needs them, and I give out pills prescribed by the doctors. I love you all. Doctors come and go all the time. Doctors from Sumy come to do check ups and dispense medicines.”

“My parents are in their 70s and they watch state TV and trust the authorities, so they’re unlikely to trust the Ukrainians.”

Like Sofia’s parents, Sergey and Natalia had decided to stay in Sudzha when the evacuation was announced.

“My parents could have left in that evacuation,” Sofia says. “But my mother wouldn’t leave my brother. All his documents were burned with his car, and you had to have documents to be evacuated.”

In November, Ukrainian soldiers took 46 locals from the Sudzha district to its own territory who then travelled on to Belarus and from there to Russia. The circuitous route was the result of the two sides being unable to agree a ceasefire or to open a humanitarian corridor to allow civilians to leave the war torn region. Many civilians were too afraid to leave Sudzha for the unknown, however, so the group was very small.

“My parents are unlikely to go through Ukraine,” says Yelena, who lives with her family in Kursk but whose parents remain in Sudzha. “My parents are in their 70s and they watch state TV and trust the authorities, so they’re unlikely to trust the Ukrainians.”

Yelena has heard nothing from her parents since August, when the incursion began. She had wanted to go and get them out on 6 August when heavy shelling began, but her husband persuaded her not to risk coming under fire in her small car. She is desperate for information about her family but has no idea how to get it safely, though she did manage to speak to one activist who had driven to Sudzha and subsequently informed her that her parents were alive and well.

White flags

The shelling of Sudzha increased the day before the boarding school was hit, and relatives of those taking refuge there managed to make contact with them via the AFU on 31 January. “It felt like they were being hit from all sides. There were constant explosions, buildings were collapsing. They were so scared that they were genuinely saying, ‘Let’s wave white flags and walk to the border, anything to get out of here and somehow evacuate to Sumy.’”

But the people I spoke to realised that the residents of the boarding school wouldn’t reach the border. Even if they were lucky and didn’t come under fire, many were pensioners, some of whom could barely walk. “The plan was somehow unrealistic, although I understand the motivation. They were scared, they didn’t think they’d survive where they were,” one woman said.

However, the walk to the border never took place, and the boarding school was destroyed by an incoming shell on 1 February. Sofia repeats what she heard from her parents.

“They had just eaten and gone down to the basement when an entire section of the ceiling exploded behind them. Everything was engulfed in flames.” The boarding school was on fire, the main entrance to the shelter was blocked and there was no way through. There was debris, dust, people couldn’t breathe. There were sick and old people there.”

Maria’s parents Sergey and Natalia were in the same basement. She says her mother was about to go to bed when the shell hit. “She instinctively covered herself with a blanket, and a brick fell on my father, who laconically said he would live.”

About 10 minutes later, according to Maria’s parents, the Ukrainian military managed to get them out through a side entrance to the building and into a nearby church. From there, the AFU began to evacuate locals to Sumy.

“There are people there who have been living in basements for six months.”

Exactly who was in the boarding school at the time of the strike is just one of the many unanswered questions about the horrific attack. Relatives of those believed to have been inside the school created group chats to share information as they searched for their missing loved ones. Volunteers have drawn up lists with the names of residents who have stayed behind; they estimate that there are 2,938 people still in the villages and towns of the Sudzha district, including 550 in Sudzha itself.

Russia’s Commissioner for Human Rights Tatiana Moskalkova published an official list, which initially included just 517 names, though the authorities later conceded that there were still more than 2,000 civilians in the district.

‘No such thing as strangers’

According to the Russian volunteers searching for those still in the Sudzha district, those living in the boarding school are to be transferred to Russia via Sumy and Belarus. At least 105 of them have reportedly already been transported to Ukraine.

While Sofia worries that if the Sudzha evacuees aren’t given proper treatment, the stress may lead to heart attacks, strokes or other ailments, Yelena is even more concerned. “When you see reports from liberated areas, everything has been burned to the ground. So we genuinely fear for the lives of our relatives, as there may be nothing left after any assault on Sudzha and the surrounding area, depending on the weapons used.”

She says she’s now anxiously awaiting 9 May, Victory Day, when she thinks the Russian authorities may symbolically attempt to recapture Sudzha, aware that any offensive could cost her parents, and anyone else who’s still there, their lives.

“There are people there who have been living in basements for six months,” says Maria. “Over 2,000 people fighting for their lives, who want to live. And who we want back. There’s no such thing as strangers. They’re all family. … I’d give anything just to have my parents back. I’ll never let them out of my sight again.”