Press
The war in Ukraine is reaching Russia’s doorstep. The border region of Belgorod is now experiencing the horror of war – and is turning to Vladimir Putin.
Belgorod – Something that Wladimir Putin feared for some time is now becoming more and more of a reality: The Ukraine War finds its way to Russia. Gone are the days in which more or less only professional soldiers and volunteersas well as recruited prison inmates and minorities from poor backgrounds experienced the conflict first hand. Meanwhile, the Russian population is also experiencing the horror of war on their own doorstep – such as in the border region of Belgorod.
From there, residents sent a call for help to the Russian president via social media. “We, the residents, would like to draw your attention to the most urgent problem: the massive shelling of the Ukraine on our region,” says a man in a video, which was shared by n-tv One mother also complains that her children have been learning from home for months and have to keep running to shelters. “Our children cry at night out of fear,” says the woman.
Expert classifies Ukraine attacks: “Different” from Putin’s warfare
People from Belgorod Oblast describe fearswhich has long since become everyday life for the Ukrainian people. And not only in the border region of Kharkiv, which Putin’s troops are shelling with all their might, but also in the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and the cities of Mariupol, Kiev, Kherson and Odessa. And this has been the case for more than two years.
Russia’s military is deliberately using daily bombings to demoralize the Ukrainian population. But Ukraine itself is not acting in this way, political scientist Frank Umbach told n-tv: “In isolated cases, this may indeed affect the civilian population, although I am sure that, unlike the Russian war effort, the Ukrainian side is not deliberately waging war against the civilian population.”
Umbach also stressed that there are many people in the border region who “were not big supporters of this war” from the beginning. There is no doubt, however, that the Kremlin is using the anger of the Russians for its own propaganda. However, the Ukrainian counterattacks are only likely to come about when the war in Ukraine is stopped. However, Putin only launched a new offensive in the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv in May. He said the reason for this was to create a buffer zone to stop Ukrainian shelling of the Belgorod region opposite. After about ten kilometers, the broad-front advance of the Russian troops has come to a halt.
Power outages in Belgorod are increasing: Ukraine apparently attacked Russian substation
On July 1, Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Belgorod, reported massive power outages. “There is damage to the telephone lines, gas and electricity supplies; in a number of localities the power has temporarily failed,” Gladkov wrote on his Telegram channel about the situation in the Grajvoron district. According to local media reports, the regional capital Belgorod and the city of Stary Oskol were also affected. The reason is said to be a damaged substation.
The regional internet portal Pepe published videos that are said to show nighttime explosions at the substation in Stary Oskol. It is one of the largest in the region and is partly responsible for supplying the neighboring Kursk region. The governor there also warned of possible shortages in the electricity supply. (nak)
#Residents #Belgorod #suffer #attacks #Ukraine #war