Lev Shlosberg (C), attends the Yabloko party congress in Moscow, 9 December 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE / YURI KOCHETKOV

Russian opposition politician Lev Shlosberg has published a letter written by the families of those trapped inside a boarding school in Sudzha that was struck by a Russian aerial bomb on Saturday, in which they warn that a lack of specialist equipment in the Ukrainian-occupied Russian town means that rescue efforts are likely to come to nothing.

The authors of the letter said that around 100 people who had lost their homes in the fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region were now trapped under the rubble of the school, and that neither the Ukrainian nor the Russian side was currently equipped to rescue them.

The situation in Sudzha had become so bad in recent days due to the intense fighting between the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) and Russian troops attempting to recapture occupied areas of the Kursk region, that their relatives had given up believing they would survive, and had even been prepared “to walk to the border with white sheets just to save themselves”, their families wrote.

Accusing the authorities of ignoring the plight of those trapped under the rubble of the boarding school, the authors demanded to know what their relatives had done to deserve such treatment and said that specialist equipment and medical assistance, neither of which were currently available, would be needed in order to reach those trapped in the ruins of the school.

Shlosberg, who heads the liberal Yabloko party in the western Russian city of Pskov and has had frequent had run ins with the Russian police, called on the authorities to open a humanitarian corridor between the Ukrainian-occupied town of Sudzha and the nearby Ukrainian region of Sumy to allow civilians to reach safety easily.

At least four were killed and dozens more were injured when a Russian aerial bomb struck a boarding school in the Ukrainian-occupied city of Sudzha in Russia’s western Kursk region on Saturday evening, according to an Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) spokesperson.

The boarding school was being used to shelter civilians awaiting evacuation from the embattled Kursk region, many of whom were elderly and unwell, according to Kursk activist Vladimir Sinelnikov, who first reported the news of the deadly strike.