‘No One Is in Charge’: Fedorov Says Sumy Region Has No Clear Air Defense Command

Mykhailo Fedorov, recently dismissed from his post as defense minister, said no one holds clear responsibility for air defense over the Sumy region, despite several military units operating in the area.

Fedorov made the comments at a briefing in Kyiv, while discussing his latest trip to the region following a series of Russian strikes, Ukrinform reports.

“There is the ‘North’ troop grouping, there are the ‘Sumy’ and ‘Kursk’ tactical groups, and territorial defense units ‘Sumy’. But there is not a single person who would be responsible for protecting the city and the entire region, and who would have everything under their operational command,” Fedorov said.

Fedorov touched by a father’s loss

During his visit, Fedorov reportedly met a father who lost his wife and daughter to a Russian airstrike on Sumy. He recalled the man telling him: “I saw that you signed a contract for Gripen jets. Let those planes destroy those who killed my family.”

Fedorov told Ukrinform that such personal accounts illustrate why Ukraine’s command structure over frontline regions needs to change in order to provide civilians with better protection.

Fedorov: Russia carried out more than 12,000 strikes on Sumy

Fedorov said Ukraine is preparing for a new set of air defense measures for the Sumy region, citing Russia’s ongoing attacks on civilians and critical infrastructure.

“We held a coordination meeting with the head of the Sumy Regional Military Administration, military officials, and representatives of all responsible services on protecting the region’s airspace,” Fedorov said, adding that “Russia is deliberately attacking peaceful Ukrainian cities, killing civilians.”

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According to him, Russia has carried out more than 12,000 attacks on the region since the beginning of the year, killing 122 civilians and injuring over 1,200, including many children. More than 2,600 residential buildings, schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed. Fedorov described the situation as having worsened significantly in June.

His remarks came just a week before the United Nation’s (UN) Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine issued a report “Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict” which tracks casualties and infrastructure damage across the country each month.

As per their report, June 2026 was marked as having the highest civilian casualty toll recorded since April 2022, when Russia’s full-scale invasion was in its early phases. At least 293 civilians were killed, and 1,990 were injured across Ukraine, with the consistency of the increased civilian death toll suggesting the escalation is not an isolated spike, but rather a progressive shift in the intensity and reach of Russia’s attacks on populated areas and residential buildings.

A pattern of strikes on Sumy region

Fedorov’s remarks followed a string of Russian strikes on the Sumy region in recent weeks, although the region has faced similar near-daily strikes since the beginning of Russia’s war.

On Wednesday, Russian forces struck the Sumy community with six guided aerial bombs (KABs), killing at least three people and injuring 17. Just a few days earlier, on July 11, three guided bombs struck Sumy’s Zarichnyi district, killing four people and hospitalizing 17 others, with authorities warning of the risk of double-tap strikes. 

Russian strikes hit Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, and Kramatorsk on July 5, injuring 11 people, including a child in Zaporizhiza, and a 11-year old boy in a Kramatorsk supermarket bombing.

Around the same time, authorities confirmed a 33-year-old woman and her five-year-old daughter, relatives of a local police officer, were killed in an aerial bomb strike on Sumy, while further strikes caused casualties and damage in Kherson, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia.

A Russian drone struck a gas station in Sumy’s Zarichnyi district, hospitalizing four workers, while a separate drone strike on a residential building in the Romny community killed four people, including a one-year-old girl.