As Alina waited for the bus to her family’s weekend home outside Belgorod, she made sure to wait deep in the concrete shelter built around the station earlier this year.
Nearly six months have passed since Alina, then 14, was nearly injured in an attack on Belgorod’s central square on New Year’s Day with her 8-year-old brother Artem. Take him skating.
“We lay on the floor with our hands over our heads and our mouths slightly open for a long time,” she said, describing how they hid on the kitchen floor of a restaurant near the square.
“It was very scary, but I’m used to it now,” she added. “And I knew what to do in situations like this.” Over the next few months, she had panic attacks and experienced anxiety, said her mother, Nataliya. anonymous.
Another summer has arrived in Moscow, where life is much the same as it was before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. . This phenomenon is evident upon entering the city’s train stations, where huge concrete shelters similar to bus stops appear on the platforms.
Belgorod’s large central square is now nearly deserted, except for concrete shelters where security forces guard every corner. Screens flanking the city’s Soviet-era neoclassical theater played videos of first aid techniques and instructed passers-by on how to seek help if they were trapped in the rubble.
340,000 residents, some of whom live within range of Ukrainian artillery fire, said they felt they were under attack. Ukraine can fire its own weapons across the border but insists it is aimed only at military targets. Until last month, Washington banned Ukrainian forces from using U.S. weapons to attack Russian territory, and then only on military installations.
After the square was shelled on December 30, killing at least 25 people and injuring about 100 others, the city set up shelters near all bus stops. In March, during the presidential election, shelling intensified again.
According to the Belgorod region governor’s office, at least 190 people have died in the region since the war began. That number is small compared with the more than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians the United Nations says died during the war. Even so, air-raid sirens and explosions are heard multiple times a day in and around Belgorod, and while some residents are fatalistic, most locals take the risks seriously.
When the siren sounded, people abandoned their cars and flocked to shelters that could accommodate 15 to 20 people. Many complained about a lack of empathy in Moscow, where restaurants were packed and revelers in clubs late into the night.
“I guess they live on another planet,” said another Belgorod resident Natalia, 71, referring to the Muscovites who were knitting armies with her friend Olga, 64. Camouflage netting.
Every resident has been touched by the war, both in their own lives and through the lives of friends and relatives on the other side of 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 regular attacks on the city, suppression of independent messages and intensive propaganda had bolstered support for the war.
“Half of the residents of Belgorod are Ukrainians,” he said. “The more things escalate, the more people are influenced by propaganda, and they develop hatred. Of course, most people are now in favor of war.
People like him now live every day with “quiet fear,” he said.
Tensions have risen in the city over the past month as Russia launched a new offensive against Kharkiv. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said the main goal of the attack was to drive Ukrainian troops far enough to put Belgorod and the wider region out of attack range.
“We warn them not to invade our territory and shell Belgorod and neighboring areas, otherwise we will be forced to create a safe zone,” Putin told a news conference in late May.
Days after the Biden administration lifted a ban on the use of U.S.-made weapons in cross-border strikes, a deepfake video circulated showing State Department spokesman Matthew Miller appearing to suggest that the city of Belgorod was a legitimate target. The video was fabricated, but it heightened fears that attacks in the city could escalate.
Members of the Belgorod Territorial Defense Corps Part of the army under martial law displayed what he said was a collection of Western ammunition casings collected in the Belgorod border area: remnants of Czech-made Vampire rockets; Polish mines; and scraps of rifle 84mm projectiles. Cartridge casings, etc.
The member, who only gave his call sign “Phil,” said he favors the creation of a “sanitary zone” between Russia and Ukraine that Putin has called for. Phil seems to think that eventually, Russian-occupied Ukrainians will come around.
“Before, it was like the whole city of Belgorod was in Kharkiv every weekend,” Phil said of the regular contacts between people from the two cities. “There is no difference between us and them.”
He said that although “it will take some time for ordinary people to adapt, everyone will live as before”. Those who don’t want to, he added, “have no choice but to leave.”
Outside the city, farmers have adapted to the state of war. On a recent afternoon, as Andrei, 29, prepared to water a field of sunflowers, his tractor was packed with netting designed to fend off drones. A radar jamming device is mounted on the top.
“A drone struck a tractor in a nearby village,” he said with a shrug. “It’s just an act of despicable cruelty.” He wasn’t sure what the Internet could do, but it seemed worth a try. He said that once the Kharkov offensive began, more and more Ukrainian drones arrived in areas near the border.
Across the region, people had to come to terms with the life-changing consequences of war.
Dmitri Velichko recalled that he had been discussing with his sister Viktoriya Potryasayeva about buying a house by the sea. December 30, Mr Velichko said the 35-year-old went out with her daughters Nastya and Lisa to buy gifts for their family on the day before Victoria, the most important family holiday for most Russians. When the shelling started, she bought a fancy blender for her mother and was waiting for the bus home with her daughters.
She was hit by shrapnel and bled to death. Eight-month-old Lisa was in a stroller and her left leg had to be amputated. Velichko said Dmitri’s mother adopted 9-year-old Nastya, while he and his wife, Olga, adopted Lisa. After months of being fed through an IV in the hospital, Lisa had forgotten how to swallow.
“She had to relearn everything,” said Mr. Veliczko, 38.
Lisa has learned to crawl and will soon get a small prosthetic leg so she can walk.
Back in the concrete shelter at the bus stop, Natalia, who works in a day care center, worries about the long-term effects of the war on children.
“Children in daycare centers are just learning to speak, and their first words are ‘Mom, there’s a missile attack threat,'” she said. “We urgently need peace talks. This will not bring any benefits to either side, neither here nor there.
She added, “We don’t need Kharkov, why should we seize it?”
