Near the front line, Russians are growing tired of war

Kozinka looks like any other village in Russia’s Belgorod region: brick houses, a school and kindergarten, a grocery displaying its opening hours. But the houses are dark and the shop never opens. The village, less than a kilometre from the Ukrainian border, was shut down by the authorities last year. Fewer than ten of the thousand or so people who lived here remain, at their peril. The evacuees were promised compensation for their houses. They are still waiting.

Ukrainian forces have entered Kozinka twice, in 2023 and 2024. Part of the village was destroyed in fighting, but they did not target civilians. Alexandra Severina (pictured above), an 87-year-old ex-resident, recalls smiling Ukrainian soldiers rolling in on armoured vehicles. They confiscated mobile phones, but left them in a pile under a tree for villagers to collect when they retreated.

“We have always lived in harmony with Ukrainians. They are good people,” says Katerina Matveyevna, who stayed in what is left of the village. Like most in the border region she speaks Surzhyk, a dialect that blends Russian and Ukrainian, and has friends and relatives on the other side. They used to sing Christmas carols together and cross the border to go shopping: sausages were cheaper in Ukraine; petrol in Russia. Now drones haunt the roads, says Nikolai, who drives people between Kozinka and Belgorod city, the regional capital 40km from the border. “If it’s Ukrainian it buzzes like a mosquito, and if it’s Russian it hums like a bumblebee.”

Over the past four years, the inhabitants of Belgorod city (once 400,000, now fewer) have grown used to war. But since early January, when Ukrainian missiles struck Belgorod’s thermal power plant, the region has been on the verge of a blackout. Electricity and heating have been largely restored, but there is not enough reserve power for everyone’s needs, according to Vyacheslav Gladkov, the region’s governor.

On January 13th Mr Gladkov warned that the city could be evacuated if power is lost. That caused a stir in Russian media, but locals stuck to their routines. They still head to work every morning, paying little heed to air-raid sirens. In fact Belgorod is livelier than it was two years ago, when it was hit by Ukrainian rockets in reprisal for Russian attacks on Kharkiv (pictured below) and other cities. A shrine of toys and flowers sits near the spot where 25 people were killed.

Many locals worry as much about their governor’s latest plans as about drone attacks. On January 12th Mr Gladkov announced a fight against “internal enemies” and those who “sow discontent”. No one knows whether describing daily hardships near the front line qualifies as sedition, so most prefer not to talk. A preliminary list of those “stoking panic” includes social-media groups discussing residents’ problems and Pepel, a Telegram news channel with 100,000 subscribers run by Nikita Parmenov, an émigré journalist from Belgorod who relies on local input.

The channel drew the government’s ire not so much for its content as for its role in co-ordinating volunteers who deliver water to damaged homes. Grass-roots movements are viewed with suspicion by the authorities, who have tried to steal Mr Parmenov’s thunder by launching an official “volunteer programme”. The government is promoting Belgorod as a heroic front-line city. A photo exhibition in the city’s main park depicts soldiers defending the country. Few stop to look. “Everybody is tired,” says one passer-by, covering his face. “Many of those who supported it at the start are feeling disillusioned.”

In a reader survey conducted in January by Fonar, a local news website, a quarter of respondents felt “devastated and disappointed”. A similar number felt their lives were on hold. Only 6% said they gave aid to participants in Russia’s “special military operation”. Ilya Kostyukov, a political activist and lawyer in Belgorod, says many soldiers ask him to help them terminate their military contracts, but for a year even the injured have not been allowed to leave. “I tell them honestly: you can bang your head against the brick wall and pay me millions, but we will not succeed.”■