"It was 9am and the first glide bomb hit the village," she said, and its ferocity - "very scary, much bigger" than ordinary shelling - was such that they immediately knew they had to escape.
"Our neighbour drove his children first and then came back and picked up me and my sister and family," the mother of two explained.
Like hundreds of others from the Ukrainian borderlands where last week's surprise attack was launched, Oksana and her family made their way south to Sumy, normally a 40-minute drive away. They have rented a property and were working out what to do next at a crowded refugee centre.
Others lining up to register as internally displaced tell similar stories.
While there had been periodic crossborder shelling before, this time was different. "What happened last week was times a hundred," said Mykola, 69, who had been evacuated with his wife from Yunakivka, 8km from the border, last weekend.
Ukraine's civilian authorities had little formal warning of the attack, though some people in the area suspected something was coming.
This story is from the August 16, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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This story is from the August 16, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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