"Russians are fighting against sick elderly people in diapers." Where are the residents of the bombed nursing home in Sumy now?

Some of the 221 residents were taken by their relatives, while several dozen were placed in social institutions in Kyiv and the Khmelnytsky region. However, the majority of the residents from the nursing home ended up in boarding schools and care facilities within the same Sumy region, which continues to be actively shelled by the enemy, leading to the evacuation of entire settlements.

Why weren’t these completely defenseless individuals relocated to safer areas? What do the residents themselves think about this? What kind of care can the state provide to lonely elderly people "in receivership" today? To find answers to these questions, hromadske traveled to the Sumy region.

In a Foreign Home

“We are almost adjacent to the Belgorod region. In case of a Russian offensive or very intense shelling, our evacuation was planned to Sumy, but it turned out that we ourselves accepted 21 people from the Sumy nursing home,” says Viktor Tokar, the director of the Akhtyrka nursing home for the elderly.

“We were well accommodated here, two people per room. But the toilet is in the corridor, not in the room like we had in Sumy, so we couldn’t even find it for the first few days. We had bathrooms in our rooms, and showers, but here everything is in the corridor, and there are always queues,” shares Yekaterina Timofeyevna.

Her civil partner, 77-year-old Viktor Ivanovich (“Oh, we’re not married, so we were afraid to ask to be placed in the same room,” the woman laughs) speaks briefly about life in Akhtyrka: “It’s orderly here.”

Yekaterina Timofeyevna shows a small green cup—she held it in her hands when a bomb fell on the nursing home, and she brought it with her to Akhtyrka. The belongings that the nurses could collect from the destroyed room have already been brought from Sumy, but without the embroidered towels.

From the Chernechchyna stationary care facility in the Akhtyrka district, 7 people with disabilities were brought from Sumy. The facility is designed for 30 people and had 27 of its own residents, so four from Sumy had to be accommodated in the assembly hall.

There, they set up beds and piled bags with the Sumy residents' belongings in the corner. Behind the belongings are piles of food supplies. The only reminder that the room was once an assembly hall is a portrait of Shevchenko on the wall.

Ivan Yakovlevich has a first-group disability; after a stroke, he lost the left side of his body. He was carried out of the nursing home by rescuers along with his wheelchair.

Mikhail Ivanovich has a second-group disability and suffers from atherosclerosis. His leg has been amputated. His prosthesis, walker, and new wheelchair were left in Sumy.

“I regret the prosthesis; even though it's old, I don’t have another leg. The toilets here are new and clearly expensive, but they’re in the corridor, not in the room. The stalls are cramped; I can’t fit my wheelchair in, so I have to jump to the toilet; there are no handrails, it’s hard for me here,” says Mikhail Ivanovich.

“The food here is very good, but the yard is small; there’s nowhere to walk, and there’s no place to take the guys outside. We had a huge park in Sumy,” complains Anatoly Anatolyevich. He has a second-group disability due to vision impairment.

At the Synevka nursing home for the elderly, there were 10 free spots as of September 19. However, they brought as many as 40 residents from the Sumy nursing home.

“So we accommodated 28 people in the premises of our old clinic. It hasn’t been in use for three or even four years because a new one was built in the village. We cleaned everything overnight, removed the debris, and set up beds,” explains Olga Semilit, the director of the Synevka nursing home.

18 of those brought are bedridden, with yellow-gray faces that seem completely unresponsive to the journalist and photographer. I feel uncomfortable: they need complete rest in a warm, well-lit room, not to lie side by side on tightly pushed beds.

“I really want to go outside, but they don’t take me out; I don’t know where my wheelchair is,” says Mr. Nikolai in one of the clinic's rooms. His legs were amputated due to gangrene.

His roommate, Nikolai Mikhailovich, similarly shares that he really wants to take a bath, but there’s no shower here...

In this clinic, not only is there no shower, but during the first few days after the move, they heated water for washing bedridden patients in a kettle. Luckily, there is now a boiler. As for walks—someone has to carry the wheelchair with the patient outside, and there has never been a ramp at the old clinic...

Watch over the Weak

According to Viktor Tokar, if he could find 2-3 nurses to care for the Sumy residents at the Akhtyrka nursing home, everything would be somewhat manageable. But so far, no one locally wants to take on such demanding work for minimum wage.

The Chernechchyna stationary facility has added part-time positions for a dishwasher and cleaner to better care for the evacuated Sumy residents.

In Synevka, staff from the Sumy nursing home come to care for the evacuees. The women work on a rotational basis—one week at a time: a nurse, two caregivers, and a cleaner who serves food.

“Cooking, laundry, washing dishes—all of this is on us; we do it in our nursing home, while the direct care, feeding, and washing of the Sumy residents is done by the rotating staff at the clinic,” explains Olga Semilit, the director of the Synevka nursing home.

Staff from Sumy have been allocated a small room in the clinic for sleeping and storing their belongings, and they somehow manage. They don’t want to refuse the trips to Synevka so as not to lose their jobs.

“My family understands me. My husband said, ‘Everyone is going, so you should go too.’ He himself has a disability but says he can manage. And our residents—they are like children. It would be hard for them to adapt to unfamiliar nurses—they would wilt like transplanted trees,” caregiver Svetlana tells me, tears welling in her eyes.

The staff and facilities for the evacuees are just part of the problem. The residents from Sumy still need to be fed. Yet, the costs for this were not anticipated in Synevka, Akhtyrka, or elsewhere.

“The people from Sumy spent 75% of their pension on their own maintenance in the Sumy nursing home. Their September pensions remain in Sumy, and they arrived here on September 20, and we are feeding them at our own expense with our products. Maybe in October, their pension funds will come to us, or maybe not.

Before the arrival of the Sumy residents, we had 90 residents; now we have 130. The food we used to divide among 90 people, we now divide among 130. Previously, there was 57 hryvnias per day allocated for each person, and now it’s even less.

We have a subsidiary farm with 32 cows. We have our own meat, milk, and we grow some vegetables; our cellar is stocked with preserves; somehow, we will survive. We even lack funds for the minimum wage for the staff, as its size has increased throughout the year. I hope that we will eventually redistribute the funds from the Sumy nursing home,” shares the director of the Synevka nursing home.

Shelter for Life

“When it went off on the 19th, I shook the glass off myself and started sweeping it onto the balcony. The nurses were shouting for us to get out of the rooms, but I didn’t want to go to the shelter; I locked myself inside the room. So the rescuers then had to break down the door to get me out—I was the last one taken from the floor. I didn’t know they were evacuating us; I was hiding from the shelter,” recounts Raisa Alexandrovna, who was evacuated to the Akhtyrka nursing home.

Ludmila Konstantinovna, the director of