Sawt Falasteen - Tears and defiance in Sumy as Russia batters Ukraine border city

The 20-year-old journalist was taking photos for an architecture project just metres away from where two Russian ballistic missiles struck the city on Sunday, killing 35 people in one of the deadliest attacks of the entire war.

Many in the northeastern city are determined to carry on as usual, but nerves are not far below the surface amid the escalation in strikes and persistent rumours Moscow's army could launch a major offensive in the border region.

"When ballistic missiles hit, or when there are some explosions... every time you just flinch from the sharp sounds," she told AFP in the city centre.

Moments later, air alerts rang out and a dozen people went downto the nearest shelter -- the lilac and baby-blue building of the Sumy Banking Academy, whose windows had been shattered in Sunday's attack.

Channels on social media that track incoming projectiles had warned of a ballistic missile threat coming from Russia's Kursk region, just across the border.

If it was the super-fast Iskander missile -- the kind used in Sunday's double-strike -- it would have reached Sumy within the snap of a finger.

- 'Getting worse' -

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Russia is preparing a new offensive on the Sumy region.

The regional capital is 30 kilometres (18 miles) from the border and was the military base for Ukraine's brazen offensive into Russia's Kursk region last summer.

Moscow has since squeezed Ukraine out of all but a sliver of land there and pushed on, with the army saying it has captured some Ukrainian border villages -- claims rejected by Kyiv.

AFP analysis of Institute for the Study of War data shows Russia controls around 95 square kilometres of the Sumy region -- up from practically nothing at the start of the year.

For Russia, an attack on Sumy could be seen as revenge for Ukraine's offensive on Kursk.

It would also represent unfinished business, after Ukraine repelled Russia's attempts to surround and capture the city at the start of the 2022 invasion.

In the shelter, the director of Sumy's Regional Museum, Vladyslav Terentiev, was resigned to living with the threat.

"We are a border area -- it has always been this war, and it will always be," he sighed.

He could not fathom the idea of leaving Sumy.

"Our team, our people, have a mission today -- to preserve cultural heritage. And we're doing just that."

Back outside, the missile threat passed, Mayor Artem Kobzar warned Russian pressure was only set to increase.

"When they announced that a missile was flying toward Sumy, everyone scattered. Unfortunately, the dynamics aren't getting better, they're getting worse," he told AFP.

He had been speaking to police officers patrolling near a makeshift memorial to the victims of Sunday's strike.

"What mood can there be after 35 people died at once?" he asked somberly.

- 'Packing' -

Air attacks on Sumy have "increased dramatically" over the past two months, Oleg Strilka, spokesperson for the Ukrainian emergency services in the city, told AFP.

Some locals have had enough.

From his bar at the corner of the street, Roman Vitkovsky said the mood had changed among his customers and friends.

"There are people who haven't left this whole time, who have been walking with their children along these streets in the city centre," he said from behind the bar.

"Because the attack was in the city centre, they are (now) packing."

But he would stay.

"They are increasing the pressure. (But) it seems to me that if they have taken three years to go 50 kilometres in Donetsk, and we have 35 kilometres here, then we have some time," he said, referencing Russia's slow, grinding advance across the rest of the frontline.

Stasyuk too was set on staying, trying to keep her city alive with her photography project.

"We just go with the flow, whatever will be, will be," she told AFP, tears building up.

"Sumy is my hometown -- sorry for crying -- Sumy is my hometown, and I really wouldn't want there to be such ruins here, for people to die."

B.Khalifa--SF-PST