'The worst bombing so far'

Askold Krushelnycky meets residents of Bilopillia, four miles from the Russian border, who despite the devastating aerial assaults they face - are full of support for Ukraine's incursion

- Askold Krushelnycky

The Ukrainian village of Bilopillia is about four miles from the border with Russia, opposite the Kursk region, where Kyiv’s troops are two weeks into an attack that caught Russia by surprise. Bilopillia is now paying the price for that audacious assault, as Vladimir Putin’s forces carpet the border region with aerial strikes.

Piotr Kaszuwara – the head of a Polish humanitarian aid group called UA Future, which has been delivering food and medicine to Bilopillia – says the village has suffered intensive airstrikes involving rockets and deadly glide bombs. “I’ve been coming to Ukraine since 2022, and this was the worst bombing I was under. At times I thought I wouldn’t get out alive,” he says.

Bilopillia lies northwest of Sumy City, the region’s capital, and the road there was suspiciously free of any military traffic when The Independent arrived. Soon afterwards, four glide bombs hit the village, but it was unclear why it had been targeted, given it was free of any visible Ukrainian military presence.

A little later, we learnt that Ukrainian forces, who had probably been hiding in forests and deserted houses for days, had attacked the Russian town of Tetkino, just over the border, to throw the Russian troops responding to the incursion into Kursk off kilter. There had not been any military traffic so as not to arouse the suspicions of Russian forces monitoring the area with surveillance drones.

In recent days, Alla, 52, and her husband Sasha, 61, have seen their house damaged by the strikes. The glide bomb fell some 80yds behind their home – a 40-year-old man sustained bad leg and head injuries and was taken to the hospital. Windows in their home are blown out, and plaster from the ceilings and walls covers the floor.