‘No one gives a damn’ Refugees from Russia’s Kursk region are staging protests, but neither local officials nor the Kremlin is answering their questions
When Ukrainian troops entered Russia’s Kursk region this past August, thousands of civilians fled, while many others were left behind. Refugees from the region have criticized the Russian government’s response, demanding answers from local officials. On January 25, a group of displaced residents held a demonstration at Kursk’s War Memorial, laying red carnations to symbolize relatives still in occupied Sudzha. Most, however, were at a separate meeting that morning with Acting Governor Alexander Khinshtein. The independent media project Veter learned what happened at that meeting and what demonstrators are hoping to achieve. Meduza shares a summary of their reporting.
Refugees who fled Ukraine’s ongoing cross-border incursion in Russia’s Kursk region have been staging regular protests in recent months. Last November, they held multiple demonstrations in Kursk’s main public square, ultimately securing a meeting with Governor Alexey Smirnov — one that ultimately marked the ignoble end of his political career. President Vladimir Putin soon replaced him with Alexander Khinshtein, a State Duma deputy and public relations specialist. Khinshtein, for his part, has been carefully working to cultivate the image of a “federal outsider” who distrusts local officials and will fix everything “properly.”
On January 18, when the refugees returned to the square for another protest, Yevgeny Lobov, acting deputy chairman of the regional government, came out to meet them. He first invited them to “come and chat” before asking, “What’s your main concern right now?” The protesters replied that they wanted a “humanitarian corridor” for those still left in Sudzha. Lobov referred to the “Moskalkova list,” assuring them that “work with Ukraine is definitely underway.”
The demonstrators were unimpressed with Lobov’s response. Earlier, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova had published her list of those left behind in occupied areas, but it included just 517 names. The refugees, however, had counted at least 1,000. To make matters worse, they’d found glaring errors in Moskalkova’s list — some saw their own names among the missing, while others identified people already confirmed dead.
Frustrated after arguing with Lobov, the refugees demanded that Khinshtein address them directly. They said they would even be willing to attend a specially organized meeting, similar to the one held with the former governor. Lobov dodged their request, claiming that officials were already working with “initiative groups.” But as the refugees pressed him further with questions about housing and financial aid, Khinshtein suddenly appeared in the square. Khinshtein refused to hold a large meeting, citing the “counter-terrorism operation regime” currently in place in the region. He added that he wasn’t a magician and “couldn’t help everyone.” With that, the gathering came to an abrupt end.
‘Don’t politicize the situation’
Three days later, residents of the Sudzhansky district demanding a “humanitarian corridor” were joined by residents of the Glushkovsky district outside the administration building. The latter accused local officials of neglecting housing issues and called on Khinshtein and his team to “stop hiding behind initiative groups” and engage in direct dialogue.
This finally spurred the regional administration to act. Local officials soon announced the creation of a special body — the Coordination Council — to address refugee issues, albeit half a year after the crisis began. The council held its first meeting on Friday, January 24. There, Khinshtein finally announced plans for a larger public gathering scheduled for the following day at the same concert hall where his predecessor, Smirnov, had faced the public two months earlier. Residents from three Kursk region districts — Sudzhansky, Glushkovsky, and Bolshesoldatsky — were invited.
The November 2024 meeting with Smirnov had been a disaster for the regional administration. Smirnov had failed to provide clear answers to the refugees’ questions, and the audience jeered and booed him. Meanwhile, the district heads Smirnov publicly called on to resign ignored his demands entirely.
Standing on the same stage on January 25 before an equally angry crowd, Khinshtein also promised to address housing and compensation issues. The Russian government had promised refugees who lost their homes housing vouchers, but many still have yet to receive them. Meanwhile, those who have gotten vouchers complain that the allocated sum isn’t enough to buy anything in the region.
“I can’t give you an answer right now on how we’ll resolve this because I don’t yet know. Considering the costs involved, I don’t know how to solve it for everyone. But I assure you, I’ll do my best to find a solution,” Khinshtein said in response to a question about compensation.
When Khinshtein reiterated that he worked “not for the government but for the people,” one of the refugees shouted from the balcony: “You’re not for the people; you just tell fairy tales. Do your job and stop interrupting us! Where’s the money? If you’re for the people, where’s the money? We’ve lost everything!” The audience applauded.
The discussion also turned to the fate of Sudzha and its residents. “When can we return to our homes?” someone asked. “When it’s safe,” Khinshtein replied. “I can’t tell you when that will be. You’ve heard Vladimir Putin’s response. Do you think I’ll give you an answer different from that of the Commander-in-Chief?”
“What is the Russian Federation doing to bring people back from occupied territories?” activist Lyubov Prilutskaya asked. Khinshtein expressed his sympathies but declined to discuss specific measures.
“Does Vladimir Putin know there are about 3,000 people there?” Prilutskaya pressed.
“Of course. I assure you he’s fully informed. But don’t politicize the situation,” Khinshtein responded.
“I don’t understand how you can hear the voice of the West so clearly, yet fail to hear the people of Kursk!” Prilutskaya retorted.
The meeting lasted five hours. At one point, a woman waiting her turn at the microphone fainted, bringing the gathering to an abrupt end.
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‘No one talks about this’
Around the same time that Khinshtein was meeting with displaced Kursk residents in the concert hall, other refugees were holding their own demonstration, called the “Red Carnation” campaign. One participant, a Sudzha native named Lyudmila Bobkova, had fled her hometown on August 6, when Ukrainian troops entered the Kursk region. There was no organized evacuation, she said, and people fled however they could. Not everyone made it out.
“[My son and I] left just to wait things out. We had nothing with us. When it became clear that the fighting wasn’t stopping, we moved to a temporary accommodation center,” she recounted. By laying carnations, she hopes to draw attention to the thousands of people still trapped in the occupied zone. According to Bobkova, the refugees are unafraid of repercussions because they have nothing left to lose.
“Our goal is to make Russia understand that there’s a war in Sudzha,” Bobkova said. “Sudzha is bearing the burden for the entire country. People there are living in conditions worse than the siege of Leningrad. We want to say that Sudzha is also part of Russia, and there are people still there who, to put it bluntly, no one gives a damn about. No one talks about this. Most think there’s ‘some fighting’ happening ‘somewhere out there’ because federal channels don’t report on it.”
“On December 28, members of our initiative group tried to ask Khinshtein about a humanitarian corridor, but he immediately cut them off, saying it wasn’t his issue,” she continued. “After Moskalkova published her shameless lists, everyone with common sense began asking: what is the government actually doing to rescue these people? At the very least, they should explain what’s been done over the past six months to free them.”