The Russians who’ve tasted occupation Meet the desperate relatives of trapped Sudzha residents and the refugees who fled Ukrainian troops in time
Ukrainian troops entered Russia’s Kursk region on August 6 and rapidly captured several dozen towns. According to official Russian data, 112,000 people have fled the area, while the number of people left under occupation is unknown. Most who managed to escape have ended up in Kursk, the region’s administrative center. Refugees initially believed they’d be able to return home in short order. They collected emergency aid and waited with eyes glued to Ukrainian news outlets for information about loved ones left behind in the border area. However, it soon became clear that establishing an exit route for civilians wasn’t even under discussion, and it wasn’t long before the funds allocated by the Russian government for refugee assistance began to run out.
In early November, several refugees from Sudzha and other occupied towns staged a protest in Kursk’s main public square. Afterward, local officials vowed to address their grievances, but nothing, so far, has been resolved.
The independent journalists’ cooperative Bereg spoke to some of the Kursk region’s displaced civilians to learn what has happened to them over the past three months. Meduza in English presents an abridged translation of the report.
Names in this story have been changed to protect the safety of the individuals involved.
“At three in the morning, the shelling began — an intense bombardment. By six, they’d already reached Goncharovka [a town on the southwestern outskirts of Sudzha]. They advanced quickly because the border was practically undefended, with only conscripts stationed there,” Yulia told Bereg.
This was one Sudzhda resident’s recollection of how Ukraine’s offensive began on August 6. Yulia and her husband, Valery, and their 10 children (nine of whom are adopted), a daughter-in-law, and four grandchildren witnessed the incursion firsthand. Ukrainian forces entered the town within hours. Regional and district officials failed to evacuate in time, and locals like Yulia and her family were forced to flee without warning.
“We left on our own because we started to sense something was wrong. We all assumed it would last just a day or two,” said Alla, another Sudzha resident. Along with her husband, their child, and an elderly mother, she managed to escape the town under fire on the first day of Ukraine’s operation.
Locals say the lack of an organized evacuation was the main failure of Alexander Bogachev, the district head at the time (who was dismissed in mid-November), and Kursk Governor Alexey Smirnov. Asked today, Sudzha’s refugees will tell you that officials should have been better prepared for the possibility of full-scale hostilities in the region, which borders Ukraine. “We got no help from our district head or mayor [Vitaly Slashchev],” Alla complained. “They were nowhere to be seen — no meetings with residents, official guidance, or support. No one has seen them since those first days.”
Governor Smirnov has deflected such criticism by blaming Russia’s Defense Ministry, claiming that the military never issued any evacuation directives.
At the same time, Sudzha residents did receive some warnings — albeit not from Russian officials. Yulia and Valery said they and others in town received calls and messages from a mysterious “Ukrainian” on the eve of the incursion. A man who introduced himself as Alexey (and sometimes Andrey) contacted people, urging them to leave Sudzha as soon as possible. His identity remains unknown.
“He texted our daughter: ‘Leave! Leave Sudzha!’ But everyone laughed at him, saying, ‘What are you talking about? We have a strong army. The border is secure. Nothing will happen to us.’ People made fun of him. And now you see what happened,” said Valery. According to his wife, similar warnings appeared in the comments section of the local Telegram channel “Sudzha Rodnaya,” which has 82,500 subscribers. “Of course, no one believed him.”
Those comments are no longer visible in the channel.
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When the shelling began, Yulia, Valery, and their family initially sought refuge in the basement of a nearby school. “They were pounding the city without stopping,” but it eventually subsided, and the family headed for Bolshoye Soldatskoye, a town about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from Sudzha. They spent the next few days at a farm where one of their sons worked. When the Ukrainians started shelling Bolshoye Soldatskoye, they went to Kursk.
When fleeing these areas, Yulia and Valery say they witnessed Ukrainian soldiers firing at civilian vehicles, and other refugees have reported similar attacks. Ukraine denies these allegations.
Alla also described attacks on the Sudzha-Kursk highway. She said her family got out just in time: a few hours after they fled, “drones started hitting cars,” friends later told her. Fortunately, her family reached Kursk safely. Once in the city, they rented an apartment on a short-term basis, thinking they’d soon return home. When that hope faded, they found a longer-term rental. “We were barely able to get our kid into a kindergarten. At first, we were told there were no spots, but later [the authorities] ordered them to take in children from the border areas, no waiting in line,” Alla told Bereg.
Alla and her husband are now searching for work and “getting by entirely on their own.” “We pay for [the apartment] ourselves — it costs 27,000 rubles [$260] a month, which is a lot for us (especially since we owned our home in Sudzha). Sometimes, we stop by humanitarian aid centers,” she added.
‘At least the authorities don’t get in the way of our work, and thank God for that’
In the early days of Ukraine’s Kursk offensive, the Russian government allocated funds to assist those affected: first, 220 million rubles ($2.1 million), then 1.8 billion ($17.4 million), and then another 1.5 billion ($14.5 million) in late August. This money was distributed as compensation for lost housing and other property, amounting to 175,000 rubles ($1,700) per person.
Additionally, on August 9, Governor Smirnov shared hotline numbers on social media for refugees seeking assistance. Two days earlier, he met with Vladimir Putin and assured the president that his administration had “provided everything necessary” to the region’s displaced, including temporary accommodation centers in local boarding schools, sports clubs, and similar facilities.
At the same time, Russia has witnessed a nationwide campaign to collect humanitarian aid for Kursk. A steady stream of clothing, food, medicine, household goods, and other essentials have flowed to the region. The Federal State Information System’s “Gosuslugi” portal even launched a special section where refugees can find information about receiving payments and registering for assistance, and volunteers can learn how to pitch in, where to deliver aid, and how to donate blood.
Volunteers in Kursk get packages from across the country and distribute the goods at designated points around the city. Two distribution centers (one for clothes and the other for food) belong to the unregistered political party Rassvet, led by Ekaterina Duntsova, who tried and failed to challenge Vladimir Putin for the presidency earlier this year. The party’s refugee aid initiative, “All Together,” runs entirely on public donations.
Duntsova told Bereg that All Together is designed to operate as a “one-stop shop”:
The idea was that people could message a bot or contact our coordinators and explain all their problems in one go. Then, we would assist them in multiple areas (for example, clothing, food, household items) or tell them where to go (for payments and so on).
From temporary shelters to psychological support, All Together’s approach to assistance is far more efficient than the government’s hotlines and online portals, argued Duntsova. Her party’s local branch leader, Alexander Novikov, told Bereg that officials in Kursk failed to organize effectively. He said the region averted a full-scale humanitarian disaster only thanks to private initiatives:
We saw immediately that people need targeted help — for example, here’s someone who clearly needs larger-sized clothing, but all he got were mediums. The governor has enough resources to devote more attention [to refugees’ needs]. We need to work on improving living conditions and raising the volume of humanitarian aid. But it feels like the authorities’ goal is to implement a budget and distribute whatever is available rather than actually help.
The Kursk region’s authorities view their own displaced constituents as a source of problems more than anything, Duntsova told Bereg. “[The administration’s attitude is]: we’re on the job here, it’s a tense situation, and you’re out here [protesting], appealing to the media, and causing us headaches,” she explained. “[The authorities] have their eyes fixed upward, not downward — all that matters is what their superiors will think.”
Russia’s main political parties have staged some outreach to Kursk’s refugees, but Duntsova argued that it’s mostly been for show. She recalled how in September, just before gubernatorial elections (held normally, despite Ukraine’s occupation of part of the region), deputies from United Russia, LDPR, and other parties traveled to Kursk and met with locals. “It was all just a publicity stunt,” said Duntsova.
“Once the elections were over, it was just volunteers left, like the [Russian] Red Cross and our team,” she said. “The governor’s office contacted Sasha [Novikov] and asked: Are you guys still open? [When they learned we were], they sent about 200 refugees to our two centers. They almost broke down our doors, thinking we must have everything they needed if the administration sent them to us, but at least the authorities don’t get in the way of our work. Thank God for that.”
‘We lived better in Sudzha than people do in Kursk’
Before Ukraine’s incursion, the adults in Yulia and Valery’s family regularly visited Kursk on business. This time, however, they needed to find at least temporary housing for themselves, their children, and their grandchildren. After repeatedly being turned down because of the 10 children in their group, the couple found a local man who builds private homes for sale. He offered to let them stay in one of his unfinished houses for free.
The family stayed there for a week until prospective buyers wanted a look at the house, forcing the family on their way. Yulia recalls how they “wandered the city for a day” until they spotted a remote, abandoned house that had been in disrepair “for maybe a decade.” “We found the owners and explained our situation. The woman said, ‘You can live here; we don’t need this house. Just pay for the gas and water if you use them,’” Yulia remembers. The yard was so overgrown that they “spent a whole day cutting down maple trees” just to get inside.
The family still lives in this house today. They’ve made several improvements, installing heating, water, a toilet, and a bathtub. They’ve also acquired several bunk beds. Yulia and Valery now have jobs in Kursk (for safety reasons, they asked Bereg not to disclose any details about their work). Four of the children continue studying online with their teachers from Sudzha, while six others, who have health issues, attend a local boarding school.
Adjusting to the new conditions has been difficult for Yulia. Back in Sudzha, she and Valery lived comfortably with their children. Now, they’re trying to make an abandoned house livable without knowing when they can go home.
Yulia admits she doesn’t like Kursk. She speaks nostalgically about her hometown:
We honestly lived like royalty. Our town was well-maintained and beautiful, and there wasn’t a scrap of trash anywhere. It was so cozy, so lovely. Here, there are landfills and dumpsters everywhere. Pardon my language, but it’s a shithole. My God! [In Sudzha,] even our gas pipes that ran along the streets were painted. You could go to the river, into the forest. I don’t know, maybe the people in our town are just hardworking. Our town hall was wonderful; they’d post an announcement like, “Let’s all get together and tidy up the neighboring town.” And we’d be thrilled! That’s how it was in Sudzha. Everyone was close.
Alla and her family are also “struggling with the uncertainty.” “It’s hard to live the way we’re living now. It’s unclear what’s happening with work. And you can’t explain to a small child why they can’t just go home to get their toys and bicycle,” she says. “We lived better in Sudzha than people live in Kursk. Everyone back home is hardworking and well-off.”
Yulia and Valery say Sudzha’s patented town solidarity enabled refugees to stage a protest in central Kursk in early November. “We’re stronger together. That’s just how Sudzha people are. Half of the town was there,” Yulia told Bereg proudly. Journalists from the media outlet 7x7 estimate that the turnout was roughly 120 people. Meanwhile, an eyewitness told Holod Media that maybe 200 demonstrators joined the rally.
‘You’ve got to open a humanitarian escape corridor even if it’s for just one person’
Alla’s sister stayed in Sudzha with her husband and daughter. Alla hasn’t heard from any of them since the start of Ukraine’s incursion:
Even before we left, [the town] had already lost power, water, gas, and communications. Everything was cut off by around 8 a.m. on August 6. We have no idea how they’re heating their home or what they’re eating and drinking. I know some people have seen their relatives in videos online, but not us. My family lives in the town of Zaoleshenka, which never seems to appear in any footage.
Yulia and Valery left behind a close family friend they lovingly call “Auntie.” They’ve had no contact with her since their escape, but they once spotted her in photographs taken by a Ukrainian journalist reporting from Sudzha.
Images and videos shared on Ukrainian Telegram channels and in news reports are refugees’ only access to information about friends and relatives caught under occupation. In the early days of the incursion, when Father Sergiy lost contact with his parents in Sudzha, he created a private Telegram group and started collecting what he could find online.
The priest’s last phone call with his parents was on August 6. “My father said he wouldn’t leave because there was nothing about it on the news that morning. ‘Why would they lie to us?’ he asked me then. My parents believed it was all temporary. Since that day, I haven’t been able to reach them,” Sergiy recalled.
A week later, the priest and his wife tried to reach Sudzha by car, but the fighting made it impossible. So, he started looking for different ways to get his parents out and help others “in equally desperate circumstances.” That’s how he got the idea for the Telegram group.
The group’s members compiled a list of people still in Sudzha and other border towns. At the time of this writing, the list included 586 names. Marina, a member of the chat, recognized her husband in a video recorded at a boarding school in Sudzha. Before the Ukrainian offensive, it had been a school for children living in remote areas and kids with special needs. After August 6, Ukrainian forces started using the building to house people displaced by the fighting.
Marina connected with Father Sergiy through mutual acquaintances, and they started working together, bringing into the group the relatives of people stuck under Ukrainian occupation. “We’ve got more than 1,500 people now who are either just monitoring the situation or waiting desperately for any news about their loved ones. I address the authorities on their behalf,” Father Sergiy told Bereg.
In his appeals, Sergiy calls on both the Russian and Ukrainian authorities to establish a humanitarian escape corridor out of Sudzha. He says he was told by Eduard Moskaliov, the commandant of the area under Ukrainian military control, that about 2,000 locals remain under occupation. (This is significantly more than the 100–200 claimed by the Ukrainian media, though those numbers were reported back in mid-August.) Sergiy argues that “a humanitarian escape corridor must be opened, even if it’s for just one person.” The priest says Russia should initiate the negotiations: “After all, we’re talking about Russian citizens.”
On September 13, he mailed a written appeal for an escape corridor to both Putin and Zelensky. Sergiy’s letters were answered, but not by the leaders he addressed. The response to the appeal to Putin came from Colonel Viktor Kalganov, the deputy commander of Russia’s National Defense Control Center. Answering for Zelensky was Stanislav Kulik, the spokesman for the Verkhovna Rada’s human rights commissioner. Sergiy admits that he has no idea why his letters were redirected to these men.
“We addressed the commanders-in-chief, who can order a humanitarian corridor,” he explained.
So far, nobody has ordered a way out for the region’s civilians. According to the response signed “V. Kalganov,” negotiations on a humanitarian corridor are impossible because Ukraine “refuses to engage in dialogue.” Kulik’s letter makes the same claim, stating that Russia “refuses to provide a humanitarian corridor” and “does not engage with the Ukrainian side or international organizations.” The letter from Kyiv also says the Ukrainian authorities contacted the International Red Cross and sent a formal note to the U.N.
Father Sergiy also contacted the International Red Cross, which told him that it can’t operate in the region until Russia and Ukraine guarantee its staff’s safety. He also sent letters to the U.N — to both the secretary-general and the high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk. “We even appealed to Pope Francis,” says Sergiy.
Neither the U.N. nor the Vatican answered the priest’s letters.
‘They wanted to leave’
A week after Kyiv’s incursion forces occupied the Kursk region’s border areas, the Ukrainian authorities announced that they had begun delivering humanitarian aid to the residents of local towns. However, Father Sergiy reports that refugees are concerned that their trapped relatives are at risk of medicine and food shortages (videos from the area sometimes show people mentioning these issues).
Sergiy also says he’s heard “rumors” about several locals dying due to a “lack of qualified medical care.” These reports are unconfirmed, but he fears the situation will worsen once the winter weather arrives.
According to the Russian authorities, occupation troops have already started forcing some civilians in the Kursk region to relocate to Ukraine. In October, Russia’s human rights commissioner, Tatyana Moskalkova, said relatives of people in occupied areas had contacted her and asked for her intervention.
Refugees who spoke to Bereg expressed surprise when hearing about Moskalkova’s initiative, saying they didn’t know anyone who’d signed such a petition. Bereg asked Russia’s Human Rights Commission for clarification but received no response.
Since early August, a handful of unconfirmed reports have suggested that some people caught in Kursk’s occupied areas voluntarily traveled to Ukraine. Father Sergiy said he knows of certain Ukrainian videos showing people claiming they “want to leave.” He described one video where a woman waves her Ukrainian passport and says she’s ready to leave. “But as for cases of [the Ukrainian forces] forcibly taking Russians to Ukraine — we have no credible reports of that, so far.”
Bereg spoke to a refugee named Larisa, who shared several anecdotes about Sudzha residents leaving for Ukraine, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes not.
Larisa says she started hearing rumors on October 13, a day before Tatyana Moskalkova’s statement, that Ukrainian soldiers had supposedly taken upwards of 30 men from the town of Plekhovo. A man living there apparently managed to call his wife and describe seeing the men being carted off in the direction of Ukraine.
“I don’t know how true that is — maybe they’re taking those eligible for military service or just taking the men in general to exchange them later,” Larisa told Bereg.
Kyiv’s incursion forces have, of course, transferred Russian prisoners of war from the Kursk region to Ukraine. Since late August, Russia and Ukraine have conducted four prisoner exchanges: the first returned 115 POWs to Russia, the second 103, the third 95, and the fourth 30. It’s unknown how many more Russian soldiers captured in the Kursk region remain in Ukraine.
‘Something’s gotta give’
In November, more than 2,500 people signed an open letter to the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, again demanding a humanitarian escape corridor from the Kursk region.
“For two and a half months, our loved ones have been without food, communication, electricity, gas, heating, or medicine. Among them are elderly people who couldn’t leave and whose evacuation wasn’t organized,” reads the appeal. “Those who managed to escape the conflict zone say that they suffered from hunger and cold and that residents are regularly killed by shelling.”
Reacting to this second appeal, the Ukrainian authorities said they’d already responded to a similar letter, and the answer remained: “Moscow is not open to dialog.” The Russian authorities didn’t respond at all this time, though a phalanx of federal officials from the Kremlin, the State Duma, and the Federation Council later said during meetings with Svetlana Lyakhova, a refugee woman from Sudzha, that they’d never received any appeals from the area’s residents.
“We probably haven’t written enough letters or spoken up enough. Maybe our silence created more silence. But what can we do when so little is written about us in the national media? When they don’t show us on network TV? You could read or watch the news for a whole week or even a month and walk away thinking we don’t exist — that our problems aren’t real. Still, we can’t give up, and we’ve actually made it happen: Every major government agency has welcomed us, they’ve seen us, and they’ve heard us. Now, something has got to give, right?” Lyakhova told the newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
However, neither their letter-writing nor their meetings with state officials have brought the people of Sudzha any closer to a humanitarian escape corridor. So far, no information suggests that Russia and Ukraine have even broached the subject. Father Sergiy told Bereg that he believes their last chance is to involve the United Nations and the Pope. “If neither responds, that leaves little hope,” said the priest.
Sergiy complains that Sudzha could have spared more residents from occupation if town officials had ordered an evacuation on day one of Ukraine’s offensive and warned people about how serious the situation was. “The official state of emergency didn’t come until August 9, and instead of talking straight, they called them ‘ordinary sabotage-reconnaissance units.’ What they needed to do was drive down the street with loudspeakers, telling everyone, ‘Pack up now! Emergency evacuation!’ Then nobody would have stayed behind,” the priest told Bereg.
Sudzha officials did not respond to Bereg’s inquiries about why the town failed to warn residents about the need to evacuate ahead of Ukraine’s incursion.
‘A big battle is coming’
Father Sergiy says he’s losing hope that he and other relatives of those still in Sudzha will be able to save their loved ones. He suspects that both Kyiv and Moscow have reasons to ignore the people caught in the area.
Some refugees are placing their hopes on Russia’s counteroffensive in the region, but they still fear they’ll never see their relatives again, even if Ukrainian troops are driven out. As Larisa puts it, “a big battle is coming.” The Russian military’s reliance on scorched-earth tactics worries people like Father Sergiy. The army “typically leaves nothing behind once it begins retaking territories,” he told Bereg.
Like many refugees who spoke to Bereg, Larisa said she blames herself for not getting her parents out of Sudzha when there was still time. She worries that her mother and father now feel “abandoned” — not only by their daughter but also by the state:
I know many who stayed behind, believing that the Russian army — that our great country and its authorities — would rescue them before it was too late. And that’s what betrayed them. The biggest alarmists — those who trusted no one — were the first to leave. But older people barely think of themselves.
If Russian forces liberate Sudzha but he still can’t reach his loved ones, Father Sergiy says he “will be ready to say goodbye to his parents.” “Of course, I still hope to see them again,” the priest says. “But if things don’t work out for us, it will mean only one thing.”
Story for Bereg by Alexandra Amelina and Ilya Miller
Adapted for Meduza in English by Kevin Rothrock