Column|Ukraine’s invasion of Russian territory has united Russians to help internally displaced people instead of ordinary Russians taking action against the war or the government.
Air alarm siren started playing just as I was climbing the stairs to the Kursk railway station last week. The authorities supervising the station directed the passengers to the station downstairs.
“Dear passengers, stay calm, don’t panic,” was announced at the station.
The announcement seemed pointless. People calmly scrolled through their cell phones and occasionally glanced at the schedule screen to see if the departure track of the Moscow train had already appeared there. The people of Kursk have quickly gotten used to the war that has spread to their region.
Ukraine attacked the Kursk region on August 6. Since then, more than 130,000 residents of the border area have fled their homes.
Ukraine has stated that one of the political goals of the attack is to transfer the war to Russia. Ukraine wants Russian citizens to experience the horrors of war themselves, which would perhaps trigger some kind of backlash against the state leadership.
This has not happened.
“
People were leisurely browsing their cell phones.
Twenty humanitarian aid distribution points operate in the city of Kursk. I visited three. The volunteers presented how donations of vans from St. Petersburg, apples from Krasnodar, eggs from Chelyabinsk and children’s clothes from the Moscow region have arrived in Kursk.
Many pallets of water bottles had been sent from Sochi. Stickers were glued to the side of the shipment that read “Kursk, Sochi is with you! From the people of Sochi in support of the residents of the Kursk region” and around the letter Z “our own will not be left behind”.
A banner is attached to the top of Avito, a popular online store in Russia, urging people to offer temporary accommodation to the residents of the Kursk region.
Thousands of volunteers help those who fled their homes in the Kursk region. “Yes, this is queues, this is tragedy and this is emotion, but we all cry together, we laugh together, we sympathize together. We are together,” said one of them.
Ukrainian the attack has united Russians to help internally displaced people, not to oppose the war or rebel against the government.
The Russian government has tried to solve the “situation” with money. It has already granted several billion rubles to help the people of Kursk, and more has been promised.
The United States is considering whether to give Ukraine permission to use long-range missiles in its attacks on Russia. Upon receiving permission, Ukraine would be allowed to attack Russian bases. Have missiles in any war accurately hit their targets without harming civilians?
Removing the restrictions on arms aid to Ukraine is unlikely to change at least the Russians’ attitude towards the war. They unite more strongly in support of each other and Russia.
The author is HS’s Moscow correspondent.
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