Passenger of bus destroyed by Russian Iskander missile in Sumy: "I started pulling out those who were showing signs of life. But front third of bus was crammed with motionless bodies…"

Author: Yevhen Kuzmenko

Images of the burned-out, destroyed bus from route No. 62 stand out even among the many horrific photos and videos of the double Russian ballistic missile strike on Sumy on April 13.

The photos were taken some time after the tragedy.

No less important than the visual evidence are the eyewitness testimonies. One such account was provided to Censor.NET by Sumy resident and passenger of that very bus, 69-year-old Volodymyr Boiko.

Volodymyr Boiko. Photo from pre-war life

- I was heading from home to the city center," Volodymyr recounts. "Two trolleybuses on route No. 4 were delayed for some reason, so I took this bus — route No. 62. There were a lot of people; the bus was totally full.

- Which isn’t surprising — it was Palm Sunday, late morning. People were heading to churches and cemeteries to clean graves…

- Yes, and the bus was crammed with mostly elderly people — shoulder to shoulder, pressed together. Some were going to the market, but most were headed to the Central Cemetery.

I remember how, at the stop near School No. 4, a woman with a small child got on. I asked people to make room. They shifted a bit, the woman sat down with her child, and I ended up moving from the center to the back of the bus.

- The bus was heading from School No. 4 toward the city center along Petropavlivska Street when you heard the first explosion?

- Yes. People on the bus started discussing whether it was ours or not. We’ve gotten used to things like this... Then we saw a huge cloud of dust through the windows — coming from the area near the Petropavlivskyi Church. We drove about half a stop farther — and then, boom! The second explosion hit. It’s hard for me to describe everything I felt. Things started falling apart, collapsing; I realized the explosion had happened nearby. But in that very first moment — instinctively — I quickly bent down into the space between the seats, where the woman with the child had been sitting — and that’s what saved me. I leaned my head toward them, maybe I even wanted to say something — I don’t remember exactly. My head ended up in the space between the seats, and shards of glass started falling down on top of it.

- When you came to your senses a little — what did you see around you?

- There was absolute shock on people’s faces. Some were wounded, some had collapsed to the side — at that moment, it was hard for me to grasp the full picture because I was in shock myself.

The glass in the doors and windows was already shattered, but the doors wouldn’t open. Some young guy jumped out through one of the broken windows. At first, he reflexively tried to run, but I shouted to him, 'Open the doors!' — and he immediately turned back and started pushing. I was pulling from the inside — nothing worked. But when he pushed from outside, I saw the doors start to move slightly. I shouted, 'Push, push!' And I was covered in blood, it was splashing all over me… But I pulled from my side, and he pushed from his — and we got the doors open. People started running in all directions.

I was afraid the bus would explode any second, and we’d all burn. I got out too, and what I saw is hard to put into words. There was a dead little girl lying there. A woman lay with her lower jaw completely torn off. Her eyes were moving — I realized she was in total shock from the pain. Around us lay dead bodies, severed limbs… It was horrific."

The photos were taken some time after the tragedy

I looked down — blood was pouring from my head, covering my face, my jacket… But then I thought: wait, maybe I can still save someone? I went back to the bus — and there I saw a man, most likely a passerby, because his clothes were clean, unstained with blood. He was pulling people out of the bus. So I started helping too — pulling out the wounded, those who were still showing signs of life."

- Were there many of them?

- Yes, there were. But the front third of the bus was crammed with motionless bodies. The bus could’ve exploded at any moment, and I realized I might die pulling out people who were already dead. So I got out. Some people came up to me and said, ‘Sit down here, we’ll get you to the hospital now.’ I didn’t want to — I felt my injuries weren’t critical. I walked a bit up Kondratieva Street and raised my hand, trying to flag someone down. No one stopped for a while, but finally, a guy in a van with the word ‘Bread’ on it pulled over. He looked me over from the back to see if I’d mess up his vehicle (laughs — E.K.), since the front of me was completely covered in blood. He let me in and drove me almost all the way home.

- Let’s thank that kind man. What did your wife say when you got home? Were you able to warn her?

- I thanked him a lot. I had warned my wife over the phone — told her that something like this had happened, that I was heading home and alive, but the rest was still unclear. The driver dropped me off, Ania came running to meet me. And after that — hydrogen peroxide and all the rest.

- And a bit of cognac — was that for the second wave of stress kicking in?

- Yes, but that was more like my own ‘treatment’. (laughs — E.K.)

- When you started watching the news about the strike, looking through the photos of ‘your’ bus — what did you feel?

- Oh, Zhenia… It was such a terrifying experience… I don’t even know. Then came a flood of phone calls — from friends, acquaintances, acquaintances of acquaintances: 'How are you? Are you okay? How are you?'

- One question keeps haunting me: what happened to the young mother and child who were near you?

- I think they survived. I was standing next to them, and when it happened, I leaned toward them — and I hope I shielded them with my body.

What saved me were the glasses my son Anton gave me as a gift. The area around my eyes is all cut up — but my eyes are still okay.

I already called my son and told him, 'Anton, thank you for these glasses!'

- Volodymyr, as someone born and raised in Sumy — someone who has lived through the invasion, street fighting, and the encirclement in 2022, not to mention the difficult years since — what would you like to say to the readers of this interview?

- You know, I received dozens of calls today - and they all said the same thing: we hate them! There was not a single panic call like "everything is gone, we have to run"... No, dozens of completely different people repeated the same thing: bastards! We hate them!

Yevhen Kuzmenko, Censor.NET