Governing on the Front Line in Sumy Oblast
Mayor and local municipality head Yuriy Zarko stands amid the ruins of a house destroyed by Russian bombardment in the town of Bilopillya on September 19, 2024. // Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
We’re driving around Bilopillya, a town in the Sumy oblast which sits only 7 kilometers (4.4 miles) from the Russian border.
Every other building we pass bears deep scars of bombardment from the town’s neighbors in the Russian Federation. Due to its close proximity to the border, Bilopillya and surrounding villages have remained under fire since Moscow marched on Sumy in the early days of the war, when at first they surrounded the city before ultimately withdrawing their ground forces after local resistance became too strong to surmount.
When Russian forces left on the ground, however, the bombing didn’t stop.
Being only four miles from the border, the town is close enough to see Russia itself from atop a steep hill. This means most weapons systems in the Russian arsenal can easily hit towns like this, and civilians often have little or no time to react when bombing starts.
Employee offices from a local broadcast tower are seen in ruins, the victim of indiscriminate Russian bombardment in Bilopillya. // Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
From across the border, Russian artillery, mortars, grad MLRS rockets, airstrikes, cluster bombs, Shahed drones, and glide bombs have decimated local homes, cars, electricity systems, schools, infrastructure, and municipality buildings. In the worst cases, townsfolk and villagers are injured or killed, while others flee westward with their families to escape the looming shadow of Russian strikes. Of Bilopillya’s original pre-war population, over 70% of the town has already fled, with some surrounding villages completely abandoned, according to the city’s longtime mayor.
Yuriy Zarko is the mayor and head of the Bilopillya municipality. He is responsible for overseeing the city and surrounding communities, and has become accustomed to the pace and tempo of Russian attacks, which he says come in waves depending on the season. In spring, there are more attacks; the rate decreases during the summer; and as winter approaches, the bombing increases again.
Zarko has been mayor for 10 years, and has been re-elected three times since his first term. Born and raised in the town, he maintains a deep respect for local history, and an acute understanding of how the war has impacted the communities he oversees.
Zarko holds up a copy of local Norwegian daily newspaper Agderposten (widely considered to be a better publication than ours), highlighting a recent goodwill mission between Bilopillya and the Norwegian town of Arendal. // Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
According to Zarko, Bilopillya’s history can be traced back to the ancient city of Vyr that used to stand here in the 11th century, making original settlement over 1,000 years old. Later, in the 12th century, Vyr was destroyed by the Mongol invasions of Kievan Rus, with sporadic settlement thereafter. The current town was founded in the 17th century by Cossack emigrants from the right bank of the Dnipro river, in modern-day western Ukraine. It is notably where the influential Polish-Ukrainian minimalist artist Kazimir Malevic, the creator of the famous oil-on-canvas work “Black Square”, was introduced to art during his youth. Malevic is somewhat locally renowned, and you can still see reproductions of his artwork throughout the community, including a reproduction of his 1927 Suprematist work, “White Cross”.
Being such a historical settlement, every step holds the potential to reveal a piece of the past. During local construction projects, Zarko says he jumps into the holes made in the ground by workers to search for any historical artifacts that may have surfaced during the digging. Throughout the years, he’s built up quite a significant collection, including pieces of centuries-old pottery and brickwork.
Zarko showcases a piece of brickwork uncovered during recent construction excavations. // Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
Bricks represent a particularly important element of the town’s history. Before the Industrial Revolution, when major conglomerates began to dominate the manufacturing industry, bricks used to be made by many smaller, often family-owned companies, which would carve their initials into the surface to give the brickwork a personal touch. Over roughly 40 years, the mayor was able to collect enough of these bricks made by different local family businesses to construct a tower atop the town council and pensioner’s building – a monument to generations of families, their labor, and the history of Bilopillya. Unfortunately, the tower was destroyed down to its foundations by Russian bombardment.
There are many such damaged civilian buildings, and Zarko estimates that perhaps 90% of the destruction incurred by Russian bombardment has been done to civilian buildings, with the exceptions being a military recruitment center and a police station. Zarko retold stories of countless shellings and bombings, admitting that after so long, it was hard to keep track of them all. The scars of shrapnel, and large holes in brickwork left by direct impacts, are everywhere you look. They’re seen painting the walls of single-story family homes and towering apartment block facades, with some balconies blown off entirely by the force of the blasts. In some cases, shelling has sufficiently damaged structures to the extent that they’ve collapsed in on themselves, making the buildings unlivable.
Zarko holds up a handful of flechettes collected from the site of a recent Russian airstrike in Bilopillya. // Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
Even for buildings spared from total destruction, looking out on the outside world is a long-forgotten prospect. Glass shards present an understated danger during shelling, and every other building we passed in the town has the glass of its exterior windows smashed in, or its windows boarded up. Most residents have long ago given up on the prospect of replacing all the smashed glass, including the mayor – who says such replacements are simply a waste of money. Still, while the invasion has damaged Ukraine’s economy in many ways, glass manufacturers have nothing to complain about. Today was especially horrible, according to Zarko, who says shelling carried on non-stop for over an hour in Bilopillya and the surrounding communities. Even the local kindergarten is still under construction to repair damage from a direct Grad missile strike some months ago, showcasing the totality of destruction in this town.
A drab, nondescript shelter used by local residents in case of Russian bombardment. // Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
As we toured the town, Zarko and I entered an underground shelter, where those remaining in the city can access the internet to contact their family and meet with local officials. There are even several phone charging towers, essential due to the broadly impacted electricity infrastructure and frequent power outages in the area. A little girl was celebrating her birthday here, while her mother worked on her computer, surrounded by balloons that had been taped to the wall. (Soon after we left, Ukrainian authorities announced that communities near the Russian border must evacuate all families with children, due to the constant danger and lack of sufficient local services.)
The mayor walked to a locked back room inside the shelter, to show me some of the tiles and brickwork he’d collected over the years. Later, we toured Zarko’s office, where he kept various pieces of shrapnel from Russian bombardment, which he found and collected across the town. One piece, he swears, even looks like a map of Russia if you view it from the right angle. Yet despite hosting the office of the mayorship, even this building has experienced damage, with its windows shattered and its door frames blown out from shockwaves of multiple blasts.
Zarko sniffs a chunk of rubble recovered from the 2014 Euromaidan, remarking that “it still smells like protests.” // Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
While leaving, I encountered Nikolai and Anatoli – two local municipality workers on break, sitting on a nearby bench. Nikolai was older, and his eyes revealed much of the harsh life he’d seen. They were part of the clean-up crew responsible for clearing rubble in the aftermath of Russian bombings, but they also find themselves helping pensioners who have remained behind, a demographic significantly over-represented among those still living in front line towns. Nikolai and Anatoli work 8-hour shifts, but they’re also constantly on call: if a massive attack occurs in the early morning or late evening, they head out and get to work. Of all the munitions they’ve dealt with, they say glide bombs present by far the most trouble and cause the most destruction of all. Due to their proximity to the front, though, every element of Russia’s fleet can be seen, heard, and felt flying above them at all hours of the day and night.
Nikolai says the city needs more generators. It also needs more material for repair work, and more heavy construction vehicles to assist in their work clearing destruction from past bombings.
After leaving the area surrounding the mayor’s office, we stopped by a local shop to speak with the store’s staff and managers. Shops like this are few and far between on the front, but they’re often the only place where locals who have chosen to stay can find basic necessities. Today, the shop is particularly well-stocked, though nothing is abundant.
Larissa, a shopkeeper, details the difficulties of running a shop amid the ongoing war. // Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
Due to the forced exodus, the clerk says they don’t see as much business as before, meaning local stores often operate at a loss. Still, their existence is essential for local pensioners, who often can’t make the nearly 90km (56mi) round trip to Sumy for supplies. As a result, these shopkeepers keep their doors open despite the persistent shrapnel damage, smashed storefronts, and constant threat of glide bomb strikes.
While leaving the store, we bumped into a broadcast engineer who used to manage the local TV tower. The tower was first attacked in March 2022, at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since retreating from the Sumy region, Russia has repeatedly targeted the tower with standoff weapons, hammering the area with artillery, rockets, glide bombs, and even Shahed kamikaze drones. The TV tower’s adjacent staff building has long since collapsed in on itself from the bombardment, with glide bombs responsible for most of the recent damage, including damage to the tower’s base and metal support beams. The remnants of a glide bomb wing kit attached to a 500kg bomb were still visible in a nearby crater.
Extensive glide bomb-induced damage is seen at the base of the television broadcast tower in Bilopillya. // Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
Looking out into the horizon from atop a nearby hill, you can see the territory of the Russian Federation. Here, I asked the town’s mayor about recent statements from president Zelenskyy, who said the invasion of Kursk had deterred a potential Russian re-invasion of Sumy. (Prior to the Kursk operation, there were intermittent reports of Russian reconnaissance missions and small-scale raids into the town of Sumy, which received some attention on social media but which had no obvious strategic or tactical implications on their own.) When asked if Zelenskyy’s statement about deterrence had any truth to it, Zarko laughed. “I hope so,” he said.
Yet when asked if the invasion of Kursk made residents feel any safer, his response was much more uncertain. “No…”, he started, before shaking his head in consideration. “…At this time, yes. But we don’t know what will happen in two weeks, or in two months.”
