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‘I want Putin to see what he’s done to our city’ As rocket fire becomes the norm in Russia’s Belgorod, locals feel powerless and forgotten

Source: Meduza

In the week leading up to Russia’s recent presidential vote, the city of Belgorod, which lies near the Ukrainian border, came under near-daily rocket and drone attacks from pro-Ukraine forces. Meanwhile, the border itself saw multiple days of fighting as Ukraine-aligned units attempted to cross into Russian territory. The independent journalists’ cooperative Bereg spoke to Belgorod residents about how it feels to live in an unacknowledged war zone and how the violence affected the Kremlin’s election charade in the city. Meduza shares some of the most notable responses in English. They have been edited and abridged for length and clarity.

Marina, 23 years old

The situation in the city has gotten more dangerous in recent months. It started after the attack on December 30. But in the run-up to the elections, it got even more dangerous — people have been dying every day. My boyfriend and I went to stay with some relatives [in a different town]. We’d already planned the trip, but when the shelling got worse, we decided to stay in the other town. I can only make short trips back home.

I returned to Belgorod for a few days because of the elections. I went to the polling station at noon on Sunday. Since December 30, we rarely go out unless we need to. I had never been caught outside during a shelling attack or an air raid siren before; my first time was during the election. It turned out to be a false alarm, but it was still scary. I ran to a nearby building along with some other people. Others just continued walking. There were sirens going off as we went to vote, and then the electoral commission reported an enormous turnout. It’s all a big show, because people literally don’t go outside.

Now, when we get emergency alerts, we go into the bathroom, though we didn’t used to. It’s strange, of course, when you hear rumbling over the city and you don’t know what’s causing it. It’s hard not to be scared. Maybe it’ll hit your home; maybe it’ll hit the neighboring one.

When something blows up, I get this weird feeling where I want to hear the explosion one more time, to understand whether it really happened or if it’s just a dream. When Belgorod comes under fire and people say they want revenge [against Ukraine], it’s extremely frustrating. It’s like they don’t understand who’s guilty here. I mainly feel angry at the people around me. I’ve read bloggers from Belgorod who lived in their own little bubbles until the city came under shelling, and now they’ve woken up and started writing in their stupid blogs: “I don’t understand what we did to deserve all this.”

I wish Putin would come and see what he’s done to our city. While Belgorod residents write comments to the feds about the shelling (Note from Bereg: after Belgorod came under fire during the elections, Belgorod residents started flooding the social media pages of Russian state media outlets with requests to cover the attacks), Putin just smiles mischievously on TV and talks about victory. The streets of Belgorod are full of banners with the words “The battle for Russia continues.” But who’s threatening Russia?

Denis, 33 years old

Belgorod has been under fire since the very start of the “special military operation,” as they call it. Although we all know what this [actually] is. We’ve had some really serious weeks [full of intense shelling] — in October 2022, in May of last year, and over New Year. But the New Year strikes were mainly a response — when there are missile strikes on Ukraine, Ukraine strikes us back. This week [of March 11–17], there weren’t any massive strikes on Ukraine from us — [I know this because] we can hear the launches clear as day. It started around Tuesday. They carried out strikes about three or four times a day — usually starting at 8:00 a.m., then around noon, then around 4:00 p.m., and then in the evening.

On one hand, at this point, it’s not exactly scary — more like depressing. But when civilians die, children, that takes a toll on your psyche. I’m a father myself. But a person can get used to anything.

As soon as the fighting in the Donbas began, people started moving [to the Belgorod region] from Luhansk and Donetsk, and we would ask them: “What was it like living under shelling?” And they would say, well, all you can do is sit there and wait. And that’s how I’m living now — in July 2022, a Tochka U [missile] landed just 200 meters from me. But you get used to this, too: you basically know when there’s going to be a shelling attack, and you try your best not to be outside at those times. We sit and wait. Right now, the attacks are every day, and it’s not clear what’s going to come next.

Almost all of the people who have been killed or injured were outside when it happened. Our [Ukrainian] neighbors don’t have Iskander [missile systems], so if you’re indoors, you can be 90 percent safe. So people aren’t usually running to take shelter; that’s only if they get caught outside. And even then, they’re searching not for shelters but for any building they can find, whether that’s a store or an apartment complex.

They’ve started installing special intercom systems at apartments that automatically unlock the doors at the sound of rocket fire so people can take cover. It really works. But if you see an [alert], you only have one or two minutes to hide. If you’re out in a field somewhere, you won’t have time.

I’ve been against the so-called “special military operation” from the very beginning. Even when our government was saying there wouldn’t be any [danger in Russia], we knew perfectly well that there would be. On February 24, 2022, I even wrote a post about this on Instagram, but I deleted it after some friends encouraged me to — you know what kinds of laws we have right now. But indiscriminate shelling against cities from a neighboring country in no way justifies the same kind of indiscriminate shelling in response. And a multiple launch rocket system is an indiscriminate weapon: even if you’re aiming at military targets, it’s gonna hit the entire area.

Kharkivites say that Belgorod isn’t a peaceful city because missiles are fired from here. But nobody fires missiles from the city itself! There are no more military targets here than there are in any city in Russia or Ukraine. When they carry out strikes on churches in the Kharkiv region, that’s bad, but why would you then go and kill civilians in response? But I understand that actions bring equal and opposite reactions: if we fire on them, it means there’s going to fire back. Most people take a different view; after all, people in our country do their thinking through the television.

For me, the most important thing was to vote. Earlier, I went to leave my signature in support of a candidate who wasn’t allowed to take part in the election (Note from Bereg: Boris Nadezhdin); now I’ve voted for the candidate who is criticized the least [by the opposition]. It’s important to me to show my position: that there are people who oppose all of this and that we need to be taken into account. We’re not some marginal group. […] Maybe a majority of people support all of this, but there’s a substantial portion of the population who opposes it.

Relations with our neighbors [Ukrainians] have, of course, been ruined; people are embittered. We’re going to be sorting this mess out for a long time. I’m afraid our generation will never make it to Kharkiv — at least not without rifles and machine guns. But I, at the very least, am definitely not going there with arms in hand.

Mikhail, 28 years old

The situation in the city has changed in recent months, of course. I’ve noticed that half of people don’t seem to know what’s happening outside of their own town. The other half has common sense. [These] people are thinking rationally — most of them have started taking more precautions.

People have started spending less time outside; it’s especially noticeable in the evenings. In the last week, I’ve started thinking about how I could be killed at any moment. I didn’t use to have thoughts like this; I always worried for others, when the city came under fire, but now you really start thinking about how the person [who dies during an attack] could be you. [...]

The longer you’re in a situation like this, the more you catch yourself thinking that your life could simply be cut short at any moment and it wouldn’t matter. Some people are motivated to action by this thought. Others, like me, fall into stagnation. Against this kind of backdrop, you start feeling depressed. It’s as if you’re not living the life that you wanted. […]

I actually don’t have anything to say about the election itself. My only thought is that it probably wasn’t right to [hold them] in the city itself. But overall, none of it really means anything, because [the result] was decided a long time ago. And to create this fiction, sacrificing people’s lives in a situation like this… that’s a lousy move.

Civilians are being killed — that’s the horrible part. These political bigwigs are solving their issues, and meanwhile, it’s sleeping citizens in different countries who suffer. Unfortunately, human nature can’t do without this kind of thing — people have always gone to war. It’s very scary right now.

Anna, 24 years old

When I saw the preliminary election results from the Belgorod region, that Putin got a very high percentage of the vote here, I just broke into tears. We’ve been through a lot in the last two years. Today (Note from Bereg: March 17) I came under fire while I was out in the city. I hid in the corner of an entrance to some apartment building. It was really loud and scary; it felt like it was about to hit me. Nowhere is safe from these strikes.

I saw that the city was almost empty. We’ve had six people killed in the last three days (Note from Bereg: From March 14–18, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported nine deaths.) [The city of] Grayvoron on the border with Ukraine was just completely bombed out. These elections are like torture for us. In other regions, people went to the polls in Zmei Gorynich costumes, but I went to vote thinking, “Please just let me return home alive.”

I didn’t really want to vote — I knew it would be very dangerous. But I decided to go just to see how the “Noon Against Putin” protest would turn out at my polling station. I felt a certain tension inside: the sky was gloomy, the city was empty. With this image in front of me, I went to cast a vote for someone who could change things, who could clear the clouds over Belgorod and bring peace. But fat chance: that’s not gonna happen. It doesn’t matter that you’re voting against [Putin]; it won’t change anything. You just go to express your opposition, because there’s nothing else you can do. And meanwhile, it’s so cynical that Gladkov wrote about people getting injured [from an aerial attack], and then half an hour later, he said that we all need to rally together and go vote.

I believe a lot of people voted for Putin. For the person who caused all of this, the person who’s the reason we have to take cover from shelling, the person who’s caused people to die. In the lead-up to the election, Putin traveled to all kinds of different regions, but he didn’t come to the Belgorod region. And I’m really disappointed that he didn’t come under fire like I did. He doesn’t see this, doesn’t feel that animal fear. What Belgorod residents have gone through over the last week has been a nightmare. We’ve paid the price for these last two years of war.