Russian glide bombs struck homes and a school in the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy on Tuesday, killing two people and injuring six, in the latest deliberate attack on a border city Moscow says it wants to absorb into its planned "buffer zone."
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking in his nightly video address, said one bomb struck a residential house, killing a woman, while a second munition slammed directly into the school. "An ordinary school, where children happened to be at the time," Zelenskyy said. "The building sustained considerable damage, but the children and teachers were in a shelter, and fortunately, thanks to that, no one was hurt at the school."
100 evacuated to shelter as bombs hit
Sumy region governor Oleh Hryhorov, writing on Telegram, put the death toll at two and said three children were among the six injured. He said teachers and school officials had managed to evacuate 100 people into the school's shelter before the strike, a drill repeated across frontline-adjacent Ukrainian cities that almost certainly prevented a mass-casualty event.
The strike followed a now-familiar pattern in northeastern Ukraine. Sumy, which sits close to the Russian border, has been a frequent target of Russian glide bombs — munitions that are relatively cheap compared with cruise missiles, carry large warheads, and are released by aircraft from stand-off distance outside the reach of Ukraine's densest air defences. Destroying the launching aircraft requires long-range air defence or fighter capability, while intercepting the bombs themselves remains technically difficult.
Russia's military has openly said it intends to create a buffer zone in areas along the border. The Institute for the Study of War's September 28 assessment describes Russia's northern-axis objective as carving out defensible buffer zones in Sumy Oblast, noting a recent Russian infiltration mission northwest of Sumy City. The Russian defence ministry separately claimed on September 28 that its forces seized the village of Ulanove northwest of the city, a claim Reuters and other outlets could not independently verify.
Ukraine hits back deep inside Russia
The Sumy strike came as Ukraine expanded its long-range campaign against Russian fuel and military infrastructure. Ukraine's Security Service reported that on the night of September 27 to 28, Ukrainian forces struck and set ablaze the Edelweiss-95 and Ding-Yug-Oil oil depots in Novotitarovskaya, the Lukoil-Yugnefteproduct depot in Pavlovskaya, and the Angelinskaya depot in Staronizhestebliyevskaya — all in Russia's Krasnodar Krai, roughly 300 to 350 kilometres from the frontline.
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces also struck unspecified Russian defence plants in Tula and Voronezh oblasts and drone launchers in Kaluga and Oryol oblasts, according to the same assessment. The strikes are part of Kyiv's strategy of degrading the fuel supplies that feed Russia's war machine — a pressure campaign Ukrainian officials say is already forcing refineries to halt operations.
Putin's "price" threat against civilians
The Kremlin has not denied the Sumy strike but framed its attacks on Ukrainian cities as retaliation. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Ukraine "will have to pay a price" for its own strikes on Russia in recent months, and that Moscow's forces would continue their campaign. Putin said on Friday that all proposals to settle the war remained on the table but that Moscow would assess what was in its own interests.
For Sumy's residents, the cost of that "price" is measured in rubble and school basements. A city of pre-war life under increasingly routine bombardment, Sumy has adapted the way all of Ukraine's frontline cities have: drills, shelters, and teachers who can move 100 children underground in minutes. On Tuesday, that discipline saved every child in the building.
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