We were sure the Russian army would protect us

After first learning of reports of a Ukrainian incursion, Lyubov Antipova begged her elderly parents to leave their village in the Kursk region of Russia when she last spoke with them nearly two weeks ago.

The invasion was first dismissed by Russian state media as a one-time “attempt at infiltration,” making the threat seem implausible. Antipova’s parents, who live in Zaoleshenka and raise chickens and a pig on a small plot, made the decision to stay. Russia had not seen invading forces since the end of World War II.

Antipova was shown images on the internet the following day showing Ukrainian soldiers posing in front of a grocery store and a gas company office. She knew right away where it was—her parents’ house is only 50 meters away.

“My parents didn’t think they would be affected all those years,” Antipova said over the phone from Kursk to the Observer, being very careful not to use the word “war,” which is officially forbidden in Russia. We had faith that the Russian army would defend us. The speed at which the Ukrainian forces advanced astounds me. “.

The perceived complacency of Russian border officials has been exposed by Ukraine’s incursion into Russia. There are many who claim that the government has misled them about the danger or has minimized the Ukrainian attack.

By Friday, the Ukrainian military claimed to have sent out 10,000 troops to seize 1,100 square kilometers of the Kursk region, primarily in the Sudzha area. If accurate, the incursion took more land in Ukraine than Russia did this year, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Alexander Zorin, the caretaker of the Kursk Museum of Archaeology, was discovered during the Kursk incursion at an excavation site in the village of Gochevo. For thirty years, he and his colleagues have been excavating the burial mounds dating back to the tenth and eleventh centuries every summer.

Because his team had seen similar activity two summers prior, Zorin assumed the buzz of drones, jets, and the thud of artillery was normal. The offensive’s epicentre, Sudzha, was 40 kilometers distant.

“The accounts from the officials were not frightening at all: ‘100 saboteurs went in,’ but later on, it escalated to 300, 800… It was hard to get a clear picture,” he said. The locals who had been evacuated from there told us to leave, so that’s when we made the decision to depart. “.

A day later, the area was officially declared evacuated.

Outraged citizens of Kursk have taken to social media to express their outrage, accusing the government and state media of keeping them in the dark when they were in imminent danger.

Nelli Tikhonova posted on a Kursk group on the VKontakte website, saying, “I don’t even know who I hate more now: our government that allowed that to happen or the Ukrainian army that captured our land.”.

Channel One news reported on Tuesday night that the Russian army had “prevented the violation of the border,” even though Ukrainian troops were already in Sudzha.

Putin refused to discuss the incursion into Russian territory the following day, instead referring to the situation as a “situation in the border area of Kursk.”.

The Russian army has been successfully attacking Ukrainian troops in the “border area,” according to military bulletins broadcast on state television for days. However, the report does not clarify whether the foreign army is still present in Ukraine. Tens of thousands of Russians were forced to flee their homes before an evacuation was planned, and state media has documented their plight. However, state TV primarily refers to these individuals as “temporary evacuated people,” rather than as refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs).

IDPs from Kursk were eventually estimated by Russia’s emergency officials to number 76,000. Around a million people live in Kursk, where air raids are commonplace. According to Stas Volobuyev, many residents choose to ignore the sirens or seek cover in safer locations.

But the flood of Russians fleeing the border regions was what really made the reality of war a few dozen kilometers distant real.

Though the scope of events was entirely different, Volobuyev stated that they had occurred in the previous 2.5 years. “Every day I see people waiting in line for humanitarian aid where I work in the city center. They have nothing, there are so many refugees. People wearing flip-flops and shorts had to escape. “.

Volobuyev, whose spouse is offering assistance to the internally displaced people, and Antipova, whose parents have not been contacted since the day of the assault, bemoan the inability to provide support to the refugees and halt the encroachment.

To prevent the incursion, the Kremlin planned to spend 3 billion roubles, or £26 million, on a fortification line in the Kursk region and the creation of a new territorial defense force. During her most recent trip to Sudzha in May, Antipova remembered seeing a lot of border guards, but she was miffed that the locals had to raise money on their own to support the soldiers stationed there. Locals were supplying them with goods. The army and the government constantly saying that the troops have everything they need, but we had to contribute drones and underwear, which really irritates me. “.

While Sudzha was experiencing a communications blackout, Antipova visited Kursk’s IDP centers in an attempt to locate her parents. Nearly 1,000 people in the area are listed as missing by Liza Alert, a national charity for missing persons, which announced this on Friday.

Antipova hopes that the man and her parents will “go to the basement and sit it out” because the last she heard from the village, an elderly neighbor, had also stayed put. After witnessing others’ realization that “there is a war on, and officials were doing nothing,” she lost hope in the official reaction.

“Seeing that you’re alone and have no one to turn to can be scary,” the woman remarked. “The work is being done by volunteers. There’s no sign of local authorities. “.