‘Everything has changed’: war is at the door of the Russians

In the last five days of May, Ruslan, a 27-year-old English teacher in a Russian town near the Ukrainian border, first heard the clear sound of a multiple rocket launcher. The shelling began around 3 a.m., with his house shaking at times, and continued throughout the morning.

He had heard the thud of explosions in remote villages in the past, he said, and shelling damaged a nearby shopping center in October. But nothing like this.

“Everything has changed,” he said.

Fifteen months after Russian missiles first roared towards Kiev, residents of the Russian border region of Belgorod are beginning to understand the horror of war at their doorstep.

Shebekino, a city 40,000 six miles from the border, has effectively become a new part of the frontline as Ukraine has intensified its attacks in Russia, including on residential areas near its own borders. The spate of attacks, most recently by militias aligned against Moscow, has led to Russia’s largest military evacuation effort in decades.

“The city turned into a ghost in 24 hours,” said Ruslan, who was evacuated on Thursday after an ongoing shelling campaign.

In recent days, The New York Times interviewed more than half a dozen residents of the border region to get a sense of the growing fear among Russian citizens. Like Ruslan, most insisted on being identified by first name only, citing fear of retaliation for speaking about the war.

“Shebekino was a beautiful, flowery town on the border with Ukraine full of happy, friendly people,” said Darya, 37, a local public sector worker. “Now only pain, death and misery live in our city. There is no electricity, no public transport, no open businesses, no residents. Just an empty, shattered city in smoke.”

The hardships are familiar to Ukrainians, who have seen cities like Bakhmut destroyed and others destroyed by civilian casualties. The same goes for the sleepless nights; Russian missiles targeted Kiev at least 17 times in May. But many Russians did not expect such a thing to happen on their own turf.

Explosions are also heard in the town of Belgorod, the regional capital 20 miles north of Shebekino, and residents are increasingly seeking access to basements that could be used as bomb shelters. People who had previously tried to go about their daily business suddenly found they couldn’t.

“We are now at a turning point,” says Oleg, a businessman in the city. “When this all started,” he said, referring to the war, “the people who were against this were a minority. Now, after being shot at for four days, people are changing their mind.”

Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said 2,500 residents have been evacuated and taken to temporary shelters in sports arenas further from the border. Thousands left of their own accord, residents said in interviews.

Mr Gladkov said seven residents had been killed by shelling in the past three days. It is unclear how many Russians died in total in the border area, but this was almost certainly the deadliest week for the Belgorod region since the start of the war.

Flare-ups and cross-border shelling between Ukrainian and Russian forces occurred regularly throughout the war. The recent attacks on Belgorod were carried out by two paramilitary groups made up of Russians fighting for Ukraine’s cause; they have claimed to focus only on the security infrastructure, and have portrayed their struggle as one for liberation from the rule of President Vladimir V. Putin.

But their claims contradict reports of widespread home destruction described by witnesses and seen in videos posted on social media and verified by The Times. One of the two groups, the Russian Volunteer Corps, also admitted shooting Shebekinos urban area with “bouquets of Grads”, a Soviet-designed multiple rocket launcher that covers a large area with explosives.

As footage of the shelling filled Belgorod’s public chat rooms, civilians volunteered to bring affected families to safety, donate money and open homes to refugees. In doing so, they underscored what they believed was the inadequacy of the local government’s response, and the growing realization that they could only rely on themselves.

It was a sign of spontaneous social organization that Putin has systematically undermined in recent years as he tightened control. The advent of war on Russian soil rekindles a civic sense born of necessity, with as yet unpredictable consequences for the country’s politics.

For some in the region, the attacks on Shebekino, the most sustained attack on a Russian city since the beginning of the war, made it clear that Moscow was unconcerned about their fate. In social media posts, they used the hashtag #ShebekinoIsRussia, a cry for attention from the general public across the country, which largely goes on with everyday life. In interviews, some in Shebekino expressed anger at the way state television hosts struggled to pronounce the city’s name, even as they praised the evacuation efforts.

“It seems that in Moscow they don’t understand what we’re going on here,” says Ruslan, the English teacher. Referring to explosions over the Kremlin last month, he said: “When drones flew into Moscow, there were big stories right away, it was all over the news. And here people have been under fire for months, and nothing.”

Despite an increase in attacks on Russian soil, only one in four Russians are closely following the war and are most likely to go beyond the state media to seek information about it, according to to an opinion poll in May by the independent Moscow-based polling agency Levada Center. Almost half of the respondents indicate that they do not follow the conflict or only in passing.

Levada director Denis Volkov said it is too early to say whether the escalation of border attacks will rally Russians around the flag.

“We have a very disjointed society,” he said. “Nobody has much interest outside their own nose.”

But the violence is causing Shebekino residents to reevaluate their apathy or support for the war, and the disruption over the past week is fueling resentment against authorities they say failed to protect them.

“People are disappointed that it has come to this, that this has been allowed to happen,” says Elena, a Belgorod resident who volunteered to evacuate people from Shebekino.

Darya, the public sector employee, described a chaotic evacuation. As the sounds of explosions grew closer, she said, her family gathered supplies and waited for the official transport promised by regional authorities. When it failed to arrive, they called an evacuation helpline set up by the governor and were told to wait, to no avail.

They eventually left town in their private car, leaving behind an elderly relative who could not be easily moved.

“We saw many residents of Shebekino sitting in their cars on the side of the highway because they had nowhere to go,” she said.

Evacuation did not always bring safety. According to Mr Gladkov, the governor, two women were killed near Shebekino on Thursday after their car was hit by a grenade on the side of the road. His claim could not be independently verified.

There is also an awareness among border residents that there will be no end to the war.

Russia has annexed parts of four Ukrainian regions it occupied and plans to hold elections there in September, despite the expected Ukrainian counter-offensive aimed at reclaiming territory from Moscow’s forces.

“I don’t understand the point of these annexations, I don’t even know where they are,” says Alina, 31, a social media manager in Belgorod.

“This is just some kind of farce.”

In the city of Belgorod, with a population of 340,000, the pain and confusion of war is compounded by historical ties to Ukraine. It is only 40 kilometers from the border and only 80 kilometers from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.

Before the war, people from Belgorod traveled to Kharkiv for shopping, or even just for a night out. Many have relatives who live across the border.

Ruslan, the English teacher, said that he was always against the war and that his position has not changed because of the destruction of his city. But his feelings for Ukraine are.

“I thought I could empathize, but when it comes to your house, it’s a whole different feeling,” he said.

“I understand it’s all because of Putin, but at the same time I have a slightly different attitude towards the Ukrainian army,” he continued.

“Now I think, maybe they are no different from ours.”

Milan Mazeva, Alina Lobzina And Oleg Matsnev reporting contributed.