Belgorod: the Russian region being dragged into Putin's war on ...

On a cool night in April, a Russian warplane dropped a bomb on to a busy city, ripping up the road and sending debris flying across the highway. No one was killed, but the explosion was so powerful that it left a 20-metre crater in the ground and blew a parked car on to the roof of a nearby shop.

It’s an incident that in Ukraine is now commonplace. But the airstrike on 21 April hit a Russian city.

Belgorod, a city and a region more than 600km from Moscow, is just over half an hour’s drive from the border with Ukraine, making it a vital stop for Russian supply lines, but also uniquely vulnerable.

While in Moscow and St Petersburg, the effects of Russia’s invasion can be seen in the surging costs of daily life, in Belgorod the rattle of distant explosions can be felt underfoot and the sound of the conflict is audible in towns and cities.

On Monday, a Russian anti-Kremlin militia claimed to have crossed over from Ukraine to attack two villages along the border. Belgorod’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said eight people were wounded after the village came under Ukrainian artillery fire.

Ukraine has disavowed any connection to the Russian partisan fighters. Another anti-Kremlin militia has said it also took part in the raid, but it was only the latest example of violence hitting the Belgorod region.

Missiles launched from Belgorod have been among those that reduced cities across Ukraine to rubble, and Moscow has accused Kyiv of retaliating with attacks on the region. Since the start of the war, Russia has blamed Ukraine for striking oil-storage facilities, sabotaging a railway bridge, blowing up a munitions depot and even targeting buildings in Belgorod city with missiles.

Throughout the war, Ukraine has mostly denied responsibility for attacks on Russian territory; the supply of US and other western weapons to Ukraine is contingent that they not be used to strike targets inside Russia.

But with a grim irony, it’s perhaps the Russian army itself that has proven to be most disruptive to the citizens of Belgorod. Increasingly plagued by mismanagement and poor morale, Russian troops have been found responsible for a series of attacks, accidents and explosion that have fed the growing disorder in the region.

In October, 11 Russian troops were killed when two fellow volunteers opened fire at a military training ground in the Belgorod region. An explosion caused by the “careless” handling of a grenade at an ammunition store killed three and injured 16 in January.

Then, last month, a warplane accidentally fired its weapon into Belgorod city itself. Russia’s defence ministry described the incident as an “accidental discharge of aviation ammunition”.

In the aftermath, thousands of people were evacuated from the city while an explosive close to the 20-metre crater was disposed of, according to the Tass news agency.

For almost a decade, Belgorod has come face to face with the violence that Russia has unleashed upon Ukraine. After fighting between Ukraine and Russian separatists broke out in the east of the country in 2014, thousands of Ukrainians fled across the border as refugees. By October 2014, Belgorod city authorities said more than 60,000 displaced Ukrainians had come to the region.

Since the war broke out in February 2022, there have been reports of thousands more crossing over, particularly since the liberation of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in September last year.

The New York Times reported that some Ukrainians who had been living under Russian occupation in Kharkiv feared being treated as collaborators.

Prior to 2014, Russians in Belgorod travelled regularly to Kharkiv – Ukraine’s second biggest city. With only 80km between the two cities, cross-border friendships, relationships and families were not uncommon.

With the outbreak of the war, some families have been separated by the border. In September, the Guardian spoke to Irina, who lives with her daughter in Belgorod, but whose ex-husband lives across the border in Kharkiv.

“Our child is split between two countries,” she said. “No matter what happens.”

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