Lev Shlosberg
2 February 2025
Source: Telegram
18+ THIS MATERIAL (INFORMATION) WAS PRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED BY LEV MARKOVICH SHLOSBERG, A FOREIGN AGENT, OR CONCERNS THE ACTIVITIES OF LEV MARKOVICH SHLOSBERG, A FOREIGN AGENT [This capitalised text is published by Lev Shlosberg as a requirement imposed by Russia’s foreign agent legislation and is reproduced here for information purposes only – to illustrate the repressive nature of Russian law – RiR]
The town of Sudzha in Kursk region first made headlines in August 2024, when locals were taken hostage by the Ukrainian military and their friends and family brought public attention to the issue. Recently, the town was breaking news again with the destruction of the dormitory of a boarding school by an artillery strike, killing four people.
Despite dozens of attempts to achieve this by friends and relatives of those located in the battlefield, as well as repeated, detailed and verified press releases by outlets such as Novaya Gazeta, Kommersant, Ostorozhno Media and others, public attention could not be brought to these people until death came to them from above.
Ukraine and Russia are trading blame for this incident. The inquiry will establish who is to blame. What do we do for the time being, though?
I have been given an appeal begun yesterday evening by a group of volunteers in Sudzha and the surrounding area, which aims to gather as much publicity as possible:
Sudzha Boarding School, home to around one hundred people, has just been hit by an air strike. Right now, people are trapped under rubble with no one to save them. Those who survived are at risk of a second strike. There is nowhere to hide.
Some of those in the School are there because they became homeless because of the war and they need humanitarian and medical support. These are mostly elderly and disabled people, and the School is known to have had children living there. We estimate that 3,000 people have remained in Sudzha since Ukraine invaded in August, around thirty children among them.
We have spent seven months fighting to evacuate people, bring people back, to facilitate negotiations and agreements. What do we have to show for it?
Yesterday, we received a message from the residents of Sudzha that 21 January was the worst day yet; they lost faith in their own survival. The fear was so great that some of them went to the Ukrainian border waving white flags, anything to make it out alive. Now the School has been bombed. What have they done to deserve all this?
The population of Sudzha district and the wider Kursk region are being routinely ignored.
We need technical support and urgent medical attention to save those trapped under the rubble! Right now, there is none!
People need to know about this.
Everyone directly involved in the efforts to save the town’s population will know that the only evacuation route and humanitarian corridor is through the Sumy region of Ukraine, and then across the safer border region leading into Bryansk region. It is impossible to evacuate the population through front line areas; this is certain death.
The only successful evacuation along this route thus far took place on 29 and 30 November last year, saving 46 people. This was thanks to the decisive actions of the Red Cross International. This gave rise to hope that more people could be saved like this, but since then not a single similar rescue operation has been conducted successfully. Sudzha spent all of winter a hair’s breadth away from death. It wasn’t just those four people who died on 1 February in the School; hope died too.
There is only one way out of Sudzha. It has been used successfully to save 46 lives once already. Can we manage it again?
Translated by Oscar Seecharan
