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 down to 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."
Equatorial Guinea denies sending Russia troops to fight in Ukraine
Malabo, Equatorial Guinea (AFP) April 19, 2025 -
Equatorial Guinea's vice president on Saturday denied the central African country was sending troops to fight alongside Russian soldiers in Ukraine, contrary to an AFP report published earlier this week.
Taking aim at an article in Le Monde, credited to the French newspaper with AFP, Teodoro Nguema Obiang likewise denied the small Spanish-speaking nation on the Atlantic coast had hired Russian mercenaries.
It cited newspaper Diario Rombe, based in Spain and close to Equatorial Guinea's exiled opposition, which said that the country's military agreements with Russia include a recruitment operation for the Kremlin's offensive in Ukraine.
"I come to deny the information about the sending of Equatorial Guinean troops to Russia to fight in Ukraine; this is a falsehood," Nguema, son of longtime autocrat Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, wrote on X.
According to the vice president, young Equatorial Guineans who go to Russia "do not go to war, but to train in the prestigious universities of the Russian Federation".
And "at the end of their studies, (they) proudly return to the country to contribute to the defence of the homeland", added the vice president, known by his nickname Teodorin.
Published on Friday, the AFP article reported, citing sources in the capital Malabo, that Russian mercenaries were present in the country for the personal security of president Nguema, the nation's ruler for the past 45 years, and his family.
"Here we do not have mercenaries but instructors who help us in the framework of cooperation and collaboration with Russia, as well as with other friendly countries for the training of human resources in the defence and security sector," vice president Teodorin said.
The 2024 military agreements refer to the dispatch of Russian instructors for military training purposes.
But according to military sources, no such training has been organised since the first Russian contingent arrived in August 2024.
Meanwhile foreign paramilitaries continue to arrive in the country along with equipment, weapons and vehicles, according to security sources contacted by AFP.
Their current number is estimated at around 300, the same sources added.
Under the Obiang family, freedom of expression has been limited in the former Spanish colony.
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