The smell of death, in buildings torn open.
It is a scene achingly familiar to Ukraine, yet until now alien to Russia. But the border town of Sudzha was assaulted by Ukraine eleven days ago and claimed by President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday as under their control. When Russian President Vladimir Putin began his war of choice two years ago, Russia did not expect to get invaded back.
CNN crossed into Russia accompanied by the Ukrainian military, past the border post torn to shreds by Ukraine’s first attack. With the skyline ahead occasionally marred by black smoke from explosions, the road itself was surreally calm. On either side, tranquil fields once protected by a Cold War superpower that had not seen an invasion since the Nazis.
The turnoff into Sudzha was marked with a huge Orthodox Christian cross, upon which was written “God save and protect us.” Yards away lay the wreckage of two tanks and other armor from the intense fighting days earlier.
The town’s streets were mostly vacant, yet echoed with the storm raging around them. Small arms fire and outgoing artillery broke the silence, but at a distance.
Our Ukrainian escort said the Russian attack drones that had blighted Ukraine’s progress on the front lines in the past months were simply too busy at the frontline battles to harass Kyiv’s forces at the border and in Sudzha. Their conspicuous absence, and that of Russian air power, suggested a possible improvement in Ukraine’s capabilities for this surprise assault. The ubiquity of Western-supplied armored vehicles on the roads into Russia showed Ukraine was throwing resources it had long claimed it lacked into this fight.
Sudzha was not completely deserted. At one large building, outside the basement entrance, a large cardboard hand-written sign announced, “Here are peaceful people in the basement, no military.” Inna, 68, sat outside. There were 60 other civilians downstairs, she said.
“They brought a lot of boxes, their food,” she said of the Ukrainian forces.
In the basement was a scene we have witnessed in dozens of Ukrainian towns over the past two years, and still as saddening in Russia.
At the entrance to the shelter was Stanislav, who stroked his gray beard when asked how life was. “See, this is not life. It is existing. It is not life.”
In the dark, subterranean dank were the infirm, isolated, and confused. One elderly woman, still in her wig and bright red summer dress, rocked slightly as she intoned: “And now I don’t know how it will end. At least a truce so we can live peacefully. We don’t need anything. It’s my crutch, I can’t walk. It’s very hard.” Flies buzzed around her face, in humid gloom.
In the next room, the light flickered on a family of six. The man said, “A week. No news. We don’t know what’s happening around us.” His son sat silent next to him, his white face stony.
At the end of the corridor, talking to one of our Ukrainian escorts was Yefimov, who said he was in his 90s. His daughter, niece and grandchildren are married to Ukrainian men and live in Ukraine, yet he cannot reach them.
“To Ukraine,” he said, when asked where he wanted to flee. “You are the first to mention it. People talked about it but you are the first to come.” The idea of evacuation would be arduous for many here in peacetime.
On the street outside is Nina, 74, searching for her medication. The shops are shredded and pharmacies closed. She insists she does not want to leave, with the same passionate defense of her right to live where she always has as so many Ukrainian women of her age, in similar scarred towns.
“If I wanted to I would. Why would I leave where I lived 50 years? My daughter and mother are in the graveyard and my son was born (here), my grandkids… I live on my land. I don’t know where I live. I don’t know whose land this is, I don’t understand anything.”
It is unclear how and where this fast, successful and surprise assault ends, or when Russian forces arrive. Yet they will be too late to reverse another dent in Russia’s pride since it began an invasion meant to take only a matter of days in February 2022.
