Lidia couldn't hold back the tears as she watched her home from the window of a minivan preparing to take her miles from home. The intensification of bombing raids on her village of Yunakivka, Ukraine, has finally forced her to request evacuation with her elderly parents.

On Sunday, August 11, on the eve of this whirlwind departure along a dirt road, two Russian-guided aerial bombs smashed a street apart. "It was terrible," she recalled, shaking with spasms as other civilians entered the vehicle. "All I managed to do was pray." No one knows if she will ever see the village and her home again. The families' belongings have been hastily packed into tote bags that hold their entire lives.

A few days earlier, on August 6, the Ukrainian incursion on Russian soil − the border is just a few kilometers from Yunakivka − triggered an intensification of Russian bombing raids on nearby areas. Since then, these territories have been brutally transformed into a war zone, with Ukrainian military convoys speeding in and out of Russia.

The evacuation of civilians, impossible to carry out before the incursion due to military secrecy, requires rapid action. They are carried out by military, police and volunteers when Ukrainians are unable to leave on their own. Serhiy Nadyarny, communications officer for the Sumy region administration, claimed that "over 45,000 people" are likely to be removed, "including 3,600 children." According to the spokesman, some 20,000 residents have already fled.

In the small village of Yunakivka on Monday, August 12, the Vostok-SOS volunteer organization, already active in the east of the country since 2014, was still assisting several Ukrainians, while offering other civilians the chance to leave. Explosions rang out in the distance as the minivan prepared to set off again for the town of Sumy, some 30 kilometers away.

Russian strikes intensify

The intensification of strikes on villages has prompted many people to seek refuge in the nearby town, which has been spared recent bombardments. While artillery fire on the border areas has decreased with the retreat of the Russian armed forces, the civilians we spoke to all said they were seeing more frequent strikes with guided aerial bombs.

In a reception center in Sumy, Tetiana, 48, who refuses to give her name or be photographed, like many others, explained that she decided to leave after a bomb fell on the house next to hers. "Ours, too, is roofless, doorless and wallless," explained this woman from the village of Bassivka, three kilometers from the Russian border. "There are no more moments of calm, it's just explosion after explosion." So on Tuesday, August 13, with her husband, their children and her parents, she set off by car to leave Bassivka. Tetiana doesn't know what to make of the Ukrainian offensive on the Kursk region: "We're just glad it's our army over there and not the Russians here."

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