As Alina waits for the bus to take her to her family’s weekend home on the outskirts of Belgorod, she makes sure to wait deep inside the concrete shelter built earlier this year around the stop.
It’s been almost six months since she and her 8-year-old brother, Artem, were nearly injured in an attack on Belgorod’s central square, the day before New Year’s Eve, when 14-year-old Alina took him skating. ice.
“We lay down, covered our heads with our hands, slightly opened our mouths and lay on the floor for a long time,” she said, describing how they hid on the kitchen floor of a restaurant just off the square.
“It was scary but I’m used to it now,” she added. “And I know what to do in such situations.” In the months that followed, she suffered panic attacks and anxiety, said her mother, Nataliya, who, like several others interviewed for this article, requested anonymity for fear of retribution from authorities.
In Moscow, it’s another summer and life there is much the same as it was before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. But Belgorod, 25 miles from the border and once deeply attached to the Ukrainian people On the other hand, other. That’s evident when pulling into the city’s train station, where giant concrete canopies resembling those at bus stops appear on the platform.
Belgorod’s vast central square is now virtually empty, except for security forces guarding concrete shelters at each corner. On either side of the city’s Soviet-era neoclassical theater are screens broadcasting videos teaching first aid techniques and instructing passersby on how to call for help if they are trapped in the rubble.
The 340,000 residents, some of whom live within range of Ukrainian artillery, said they felt like they were under attack. Ukraine can fire its weapons across the border but maintains that it is aimed only at military targets. Until last month, Washington banned Ukrainian forces from using US weapons to attack Russian territory and then only banned military facilities.
After shelling on the square on December 30 killed at least 25 people and injured about 100 others, the city set up temporary shelters near all bus stops. In March, during the presidential election, shelling broke out again.
According to the regional governor’s office, at least 190 people have been killed in the Belgorod region since the war began. That number is small compared to the more than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians the United Nations says have died in the war. Despite this, Belgorod and the surrounding area still hear the sirens and explosions of air strikes several times a day, and while some residents believe in fatalism, most locals consider risk weight.
When the sirens sounded, people abandoned their cars and lined up to enter shelters that could accommodate 15 to 20 people. Many people complain about the lack of empathy from Moscow, where restaurants are packed and clubs party all night.
“I guess they live on another planet,” another Belgorod resident, also named Nataliya, 71, said of the Muscovites as she weaved military camouflage nets with her friend Olga, 64.
Every citizen is affected by the war, whether in their own lives or through friends and relatives across the border, where Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, is just 45 miles away.
“Most people know someone who has been killed or injured,” said a 20-year-old lawyer who requested anonymity because of his anti-war stance. He said frequent attacks on the city, suppression of independent information and intensive use of propaganda had bolstered support for the war.
“Half of Belgorod’s residents are Ukrainian,” he said. “The more things escalate, the more people are exposed to propaganda, the more hatred arises. And of course now the majority is in favor of war.”
People like him now go through their days with a sense of “silent dread,” he said.
Tensions in the city have increased over the past month, with Russia intervening. new attack on Kharkov. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has said that the main goal of the offensive is to push Ukrainian forces back far enough to put Belgorod and its wider region out of range.
“We warned them not to enter our territory, shell Belgorod and surrounding areas, otherwise we will be forced to create a security zone”.
In the days after the Biden administration lifted the ban on using US-made weapons in cross-border attacks, a deepfake videos are circulating showed State Department spokesman Matthew Miller appearing to suggest that the city of Belgorod was a legitimate target. The video is fabricated but it adds to fears that attacks on the city could escalate.
A member of the territorial defense force in Belgorod, one part of the army activated under martial law, displaying a collection of Western ammunition casings that he said he had collected around Belgorod’s border areas: remnants of the Czech-made Vampire fire; a Polish mine; and spent casings of 84mm rifle ammunition, among others.
The member who only gave his calling sign, Fil, said he supported the creation of a “sanitary zone” between Russia and Ukraine that Mr. Putin had called for. Fil seems to think that eventually Ukrainians under Russian occupation will return.
“Before, it was like the entire city of Belgorod was in Kharkiv every weekend,” Fil said of the constant contact between residents of the two cities. “There is no difference between us and them.”
He said that, although “normal people will take some time to get used to it, everyone will live like before.” Those who don’t want to “will have to leave,” he added.
Outside the cities, farmers have adapted to the war situation. On a recent afternoon, as Andrei, 29, prepared to water a field of sunflowers, his tractor was covered with netting to keep out drones. Radar jamming devices are mounted on top.
“A drone attacked a tractor in a nearby village,” he said with a shrug. “It’s just basic cruelty.” He wasn’t sure what the net could do, but it seemed worth a try. He said that when the Kharkiv offensive began, more and more Ukrainian drones approached the territory near the border.
Across the region, people are facing the life-changing consequences of war.
Dmitri Velichko recalls that he talked with his sister, Viktoriya Potryasayeva, about buying a house somewhere by the sea. On December 30, The day before the most important family holiday for most Russians, Viktoriya, 35, went out with his daughters Nastya and Liza to buy gifts for the family, Mr. Velichko said. She bought her mother a luxury mixer and was waiting for the bus home with her daughters when the shelling began.
She was hit by shrapnel and lost so much blood that she died. Liza, at 8 months old in a stroller, had her left leg amputated. Mr. Velichko said Dmitri’s mother adopted Nastya, 9, while he and his wife Olga adopted Liza. After months in the hospital receiving intravenous fluids, Liza forgot how to swallow.
“She had to relearn everything,” Mr. Velichko, 38, said.
Liza has learned to crawl and she will soon have a small prosthetic leg so she can walk again.
Back at the concrete shelter at the bus stop, Nataliya, who works in day care, worries about the long-term effects of war on children.
“The children at the nursery were just learning to talk and their first words were ‘Mom, there’s a threat of a missile attack,’” she said. “We desperately need peace negotiations. This will not lead to anything good for either side, neither here nor there.”
She added, “We don’t need Kharkiv, why should we take it?”
