On a quiet morning on April 13, Maryna Illiashenko and her 13-year-old son Kyrylo were taking a bus through the city of Sumy to see his grandmother, as they often do on Sundays.
It was a route they knew by heart — one they'd taken countless times. But that morning, out of nowhere, a sudden blast knocked them off their feet, plunging everything into darkness.
On April 13, as Ukraine marked Palm Sunday, Russia launched its deadliest attack on the northeastern city, hitting Sumy downtown with two ballistic missiles. The attack killed 35 people and injured nearly 120, including Kyrylo and his mother, who were trapped in the epicenter.
"I immediately fell to the ground and felt shards of glass and metal raining down on me," Kyrylo told the Kyiv Independent. "I waited until it stopped, then got up and tried to open the bus doors."
The blast was so powerful that it shattered the bus's windows and cracked its doors, making it impossible to open them from the inside. In shock and with her face covered in blood, Maryna shouted to the driver, urging him to open the door as the smell of burning spread through the crowded bus. No response followed. She soon realized that the driver was probably dead.
"I was terrified the bus was on fire. As soon as I smelled it, I knew we had to get out quickly," she told the Kyiv Independent.
Although he was injured himself, Kyrylo decided to take action.
"I threw my sports bag out the window and jumped onto it to avoid landing in debris on the ground," he recalls. "I began trying to open the doors from the other side, and after several attempts, I managed to do it."
Thanks to him, those trapped in the damaged bus managed to escape safely.
"Outside, I saw bodies lying on the ground. There were many people. But I did not have time to think at that moment. I just acted," he said.
For his bravery, Kyrylo was awarded the Honorary Distinction of the Sumy City Council "For Merits to the City," as well as a two-week trip to a children's camp in Bulgaria, Acting Sumy Mayor Artem Kobzar reported on April 17.
"Thank you, that was the act of a real man," Kobzar told Kyrylo in a video that he published on his Telegram.
The brutal strike came amid the U.S.’s ongoing effort to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, although it has applied no apparent pressure on Moscow to cease its aggression.
Russia's attack on Sumy followed another deadly strike on the city of Kryvyi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on April 4, where 21 people were killed, including nine children.
Asami Terajima
Injuries and sports
The April 13 attack on their hometown was not the only shocking and traumatizing event that the Russian full-scale invasion caused the Illiashenko family.
Early in the invasion, when parts of Sumy Oblast were under Russian occupation, a Russian air strike hit near the family's house, recalls Maryna, deeply frightening Kyrylo and his younger brother Matvii, now nine.
The family decided to flee Sumy for nearly two months to Ukraine's safer region in the west, as the children could not get over the attack.
"When they went to bed, the children stayed fully dressed so they could run and hide at any moment," Maryna recalls.
But during their time away from home, the family dreamed of returning to their "lovely little hometown," she says, adding that they were relieved to come back in the spring of 2022, after Russian forces were pushed out of the region.
Though Russian forces fired artillery at Sumy Oblast’s border areas on a near-daily basis for the next two years, it was mostly quiet in the city of Sumy.
Attacks on the northeastern region and Sumy city have intensified since August of 2024, following Ukraine's surprise cross-border incursion into Russia's adjacent Kursk Oblast, where Ukrainian troops held a nearby town of Sudzha for seven months before they were forced to withdraw in March. Fighting continues in the border areas.
Still, Maryna says they couldn't have imagined coming under such a deadly strike.
That morning, while her husband and younger son stayed home, Maryna and Kyrylo were waiting at the bus stop when the first explosion hit.
"My husband called immediately, asking us to come back home. But we still decided to visit grandmother," Maryna recalls, adding that they entered the bus shortly after the first explosion.
The second missile, fired minutes after the first one in what is known as a “double-tap” strike – a tactic frequently employed by Russia – was armed with cluster munitions. Such munitions are used to inflict greater devastation on civilians in the affected area.
"When shards of glass flew into my face, I realized that the missile had exploded very close," Maryna says. "I had glass in my eyes and couldn't see anything as I had been standing right by the window."
"I was screaming my son's name, trying to understand if he was okay."
As soon as she managed to wipe some blood and glass from her face, Maryna saw her son jumping out of the bus window.
According to her, there were up to 40 people on the bus at the time of the attack. She believes that those sitting in the front rows, including the driver, were killed instantly. The rest of those surviving the strike managed to quickly escape the bus thanks to her son.
"I only saw my mom when I opened the door," says Kyrylo. "I saw people leaving the bus, and then I saw my mom's face — it was completely covered in blood," he says, adding that it was the moment when he got really scared.
It later turned out that Maryna’s injuries were less severe than her son's — Kyrylo had several pieces of metal shrapnel lodged in his skull and is now undergoing treatment at a hospital in Sumy.
Kyrylo says he is very upset about missing the freestyle wrestling competition he had been preparing for over months due to his injuries. Yet, according to Kyrylo, the sport helped him stay focused and composed during the attack.
"It was thanks to sports because every competition puts you under stress. And with each one, you get more and more used to handling yourself."
He now receives numerous calls from locals thanking him for his courageous actions.
"My classmates have been messaging me. One of them had a grandmother on that bus, and another had an aunt," Kyrylo says.
"They thanked me a lot because their relatives were able to get out through the exit I opened."
Note from the author:
Hi! Daria Shulzhenko here. I wrote this piece for you. Since the first day of Russia's all-out war, I have been working almost non-stop to tell the stories of those affected by Russia’s brutal aggression. By telling all those painful stories, we are helping to keep the world informed about the reality of Russia’s war against Ukraine. By becoming the Kyiv Independent's member, you can help us continue telling the world the truth about this war.
