'For thousands of civilians, there is a need to flee'
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00:00Well, in Sumi region, we really feel that war has intensified.
00:06It's been two and a half years that the local population have been experiencing daily shelling.
00:11Just to give you an idea, between June and now, there's more than 2,000 hits from Russian
00:17troops over the Sumi region and mostly the bordering regions.
00:22So that's with bombs, that's with artillery shelling, because Kursk is just across the
00:27border.
00:28And that means that for thousands of civilians, there's a need to flee.
00:32Now, the people we see, just like Valentina, evacuating, they're mostly people who couldn't
00:38do so before or who thought that they could somehow manage to stay there.
00:43But the situation is untenable, unbearable for them.
00:47And mostly it's elderly people, people with disabilities or people who care for such people
00:53or the poorest among the Ukrainian society.
00:58We've seen at the end of the report this reception center for refugees.
01:02You know, just to tell you how tense the situation is, we couldn't film it from the outside just
01:07for fear of a Russian bombing on it.
01:10And maybe let's have a listen to other Sumi residents, Sumi region residents, who also
01:17had to leave everything behind.
01:18If we just give you an idea of how dire the situation is.
01:26An aircraft bombed us.
01:28We had to leave.
01:31Rockets arrived, shells exploded nearby.
01:34We gathered our things and fled.
01:37I left because of the constant shelling.
01:39I came here, as I said, to save my life.
01:42Now I am also trying to evacuate my mother, to save hers.