For most Russian voters, Putin’s two-year-old war in Ukraine remains largely unseen except on state-controlled television or social media. But Belgorod, a regional capital near the Ukrainian border, feels the war firsthand as it faces near-daily attacks.
For four days this week, the city’s air defenses struggled to intercept barrages of rockets and explosive drones, while east and south of Belgorod, the Russian army battled anti-Kremlin militias, which mounted assaults along the border aiming to portray Putin as unable to protect his country as he prepares to claim a fifth term in office.
But there is little sign that effort is succeeding, and for many residents, such attacks only deepen their support for Putin and drive home the Kremlin’s false narrative that Russians are the victims in the war, not its perpetrators. Cities across Ukraine are bombarded far more often than Belgorod, with Russian weapons that are far more powerful, including ballistic and hypersonic missiles. The resulting civilian casualties are far higher, too.
As Yanna and Mikhail Mikhichuk were getting ready to leave home to vote Friday morning, their living room erupted in a cloud of dust and glass as a rocket exploded next to their apartment building.
“These b——s are hammering us, but they can’t scare me! I’ll just make myself up again tomorrow and go and vote for Putin,” said Yanna, 55, with one eye on the latest news from Russia’s main state TV channel as she and Mikhail drank vodka and ate pickles.
The drama of the morning was behind them. “Putin loves his country — he does everything for us,” she said. “He raised the country up from the ground.”
Even as residents of Grayvoron, a border town, started to evacuate, and Belgorod closed schools, restaurants and shops, voting continued — part of an effort by officials to show that the situation is under control.
“Today and throughout the three days of voting, it is important for us to show the whole world our unity,” the Belgorod region’s popular governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said after casting his vote Friday.
The Mikhichuks’ neighbor, Lola Muslimova, said she also planned to vote for Putin. “I don’t see a better candidate than our current president — he is managing the situation as best he can,” she said, adding: “In Ukraine, they are all brainwashed, and the West is pressuring us as hard as they can.”
A medic in Belgorod’s Territorial Defense forces, who was wearing a mask, said the attacks had made him more motivated to fulfill his civic duty.
“I was never really a political person — I never voted before,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media. “But now I’m going to vote out of principle.”
Ukraine’s strategy to disrupt the vote and stoke anger at Moscow is backfiring, said Vadim Radchenko, a member of Belgorod’s city council.
“The effect is the opposite: When Russians are faced with such terrorist activities, they do not give up,” Radchenko said. “And as a border city that has repelled external attacks throughout history, there is a sense in Belgorod that we have a whole country behind us,” he added. “It’s genetic.”
As air-raid sirens blared and the dark streaks of a second attack cut across the sky Friday afternoon, people stopped their cars and ran to the nearest shelter, where they waited in tense silence for air defenses to stop firing.
Nearby, voters steadily trickled in and out of a polling station, where a Territorial Defense unit equipped with first-aid supplies was on duty.
“The situation remains turbulent, but a peaceful life is being conducted nonetheless,” Nikolai Lebedev, who heads Belgorod’s Civil Defense Department, said in an interview Thursday. “People understand that the armed forces are doing a lot of work to defend us. I wouldn’t say that the danger is at a critical level. … There is no panic.”
To keep emotions in check, and control the narrative, authorities respond swiftly to attacks and cordon off any damage.
A few minutes before 9 a.m. Wednesday, Egor Gikalo had just sat down to work at his computer when suddenly a drone hit the roof, causing a huge explosion. The windows on the north side of his fifth-floor apartment all blew out. Gikalo, 25, was unhurt. Luckily, he had just pulled a sheet across the window to keep the sunlight off his screen.
“It’s not very pleasant. People are not happy with this situation, of course,” Gikalo said, still in a bathrobe and slippers as he stood in a hallway fielding calls from concerned friends. “But what can we do? We are alive — that’s what counts.”
Within 15 minutes, he said, emergency services arrived along with the head of his building, a group of journalists and the mayor. A few hours later, a construction crew was boarding up Gikalo’s broken windows and measuring for replacements — to be fitted within three days, they promised, free of charge.
There is no panic in Belgorod, but tension and paranoia are rife.
Residents are traumatized after months of strikes, and largely convinced by the Kremlin’s spin blaming the war on “fascists” and “Nazis” in Ukraine, and on the United States and other NATO countries for supplying Kyiv with weapons. They admit being unhappy, but if they blame Moscow, few say it aloud.
“The mood is pretty depressed,” said Svetlana, 45, who was nervously arranging cucumbers Thursday at her stall at an indoor market.
Svetlana, who is being identified by first name only because she feared repercussions for speaking to a Western reporter, said that there had been noticeably fewer customers in recent days and that people were scared to go out. The interview was cut short by four security guards who demanded documentation and said journalists were not permitted to work there.
Normality mingles with signs of collective stress and a city genuinely under siege.
The windows of schools and government buildings are taped up and sandbagged to protect residents from glass in case of explosions. Food couriers continue to deliver, cycling along empty streets. Territorial defense units patrol constantly — on guard for saboteurs.
In Belgorod, reality bends and truth is distorted, making it difficult to get a clear sense of what is happening.
On Friday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that it had foiled attempts to infiltrate Russian territory and that more than 1,500 pro-Ukrainian fighters, 18 tanks and 23 armored vehicles were destroyed. The ministry’s claims could not be verified, nor could claims by the anti-Russian militias about their assaults.
The militias, the Freedom of Russia Legion, the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Siberian Battalion, who say they are Ukraine-based Russians seeking to liberate Russia from Putin’s rule, issued several statements this week claiming to make gains on Russian territory.
One fighter, interviewed on a video call, said that his group wanted to show that elections in Russia are “fundamentally illegitimate” and that it planned to “liberate our homeland.” The fighter is not being identified because of security concerns,
But as warnings of an attack and instructions to evacuate flooded Telegram channels Thursday, many Belgorod residents shrugged off the alerts as fake news by an enemy trying to stir mass hysteria.
City officials routinely claim that the air defenses have intercepted all missiles, only for video of attacks on residential blocks to surface within hours indicating damage and casualties.
On Wednesday, reports that a local office of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, was struck were later deleted from state news wires.
The result is confusion and an inability, even for residents, to fully assess the gravity of the situation.
To many here, Ukraine’s ongoing attacks — which began within months of Russia’s February 2022 invasion — are part of an unprovoked siege by a fascist, Russian-hating army.
Pressed to explain the situation, some point to Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution in 2014. The war, they say, is the logical result of a decade of tensions with Ukraine. Others give a string of explanations without evidence — from rumors of American laboratories and NATO bases located near the border, to stories of Ukrainians persecuting Russian-speakers.
When asked about Russia’s attacks on Ukraine and the thousands of civilians killed, some defend this as “collateral damage,” claiming that the Ukrainian military uses civilians as human shields.
“We are destroying fascism and victory will be ours,” said Maksim, 34, a member of Belgorod’s Territorial Defense, who goes by the call sign “Eagle” and is being identified by first name only because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
Instead of weakening Russian morale, the strikes lead many in Belgorod to think that they are the victims and that Russian forces must pound the Ukrainian enemy even harder. A public photo exhibit in the city center speaks to this. Pictures of a mother clutching her baby, a young family cowering in a bomb shelter, and heroic Russian soldiers recall images of World War II, which Russian propagandists routinely use to legitimize the current conflict.
Nearby, soft toys and candles have been placed by the city’s eternal-flame war memorial in honor of five children who died in a huge strike on Dec. 30. that killed 25 people.
Ilya Kostyukov, a local human rights activist, said some in Belgorod feel abandoned by Moscow and blame the authorities for not being able to secure the border. “They criticize and complain, but this doesn’t mean they are not in favor of continuing the war,” Kostyukov said. “There is no logic here.”
Kostyukov described Moscow’s propaganda as having “really messed with people’s brains.”
“At the beginning, many were worried about their relatives in Ukraine,” he added. “But that concern has gone now. Rather, hate prevailed.”
Just two years ago, most Belgorod residents could never have imagined trading missile attacks with Kharkiv, a Ukrainian city just an hour and a half away where many have families and friends.
It is still common in Belgorod to hear Ukrainian accents on the streets and see Ukrainian license plates on cars. Some residents fondly recall when trade and transit links still existed with Kyiv
On Thursday afternoon, deafening explosions sent people running into restaurant bathrooms, workplace basements and the concrete bomb shelters authorities have constructed at every bus stop. It was the third attack that day. At least two people were killed in the attacks Thursday, and at least 20 were injured, officials said.
In one shelter, Yulia, a Ukrainian woman who has lived in Belgorod since Russia’s invasion, was crying. “As long as we fire missiles over there, to Ukraine, there will always be a response,” Yulia said, on the condition she be identified only by first name for fear of reprisals. “This whole situation is just a tragedy.”
Larissa, 58, a manicurist who had to dive for cover during a strike Thursday, said she was planning to vote for Putin. “He needs to finish what he started,” she said.
Serhii Korolchuk in Kyiv contributed to this report.
