Refugees, internally displaced persons, evacuees… Since 2014, these words for me, a Belgorod resident by birth and character, have been clearly associated with the residents of Donbass. Talking to them, so similar to us in their categorical judgments, obsession with work and love for their small homeland, I could not understand: why did they not all leave from the very beginning of the armed conflict. How many lives could have been saved… How much could have been done over many years in a new place… And when the thunder roared in our area on that windy February, when the first Ukrainian shells pierced Belgorod houses, and friends called and screamed: “Get out of there!”, I answered: “Well, that’s enough for you. I’m just going to work now. That’s it”.
However, anxiety had firmly settled in my mind. It would hide in its far corner, then crawl out from there. After one of the first arrivals and another conversation about a possible move with a friend from Lipetsk, I began to pack my things. The cat’s. Medicines, a supply of food, and duplicates of favorite toys were packed into the carrier of old Marusya Koteyevna. And my backpack… Is it worth mentioning…
The Ukrainian Armed Forces dealt blow after blow to the Belgorod land. Destroyed houses, fields torn up by enemy shells and destroyed farms, mourning funeral processions… Saboteurs in Grayvoron . June Shebekino fire. Pre-New Year’s blow to the heart of Belgorod. February terrorist attacks.
March flights of the Czech “Vampire”, recognizable in the sky because of its vibrating whistle. Its thin, deadly shells ripped apart the lovingly laid tiles a hundred meters from my house and smashed the facades and outbuildings nearby to splinters. May strike on a multi-story building, collapse of the entrance in Shebekino…
The feeling of a surreal hell squeezes your lungs every time you see torches of burning cars, shattered facades of houses, glass chips… then in March, the miraculously surviving people from the neighboring house left. Their gray cat began to come to us. Her amber eyes in each person first looked for the owner, and then – sympathy. My neighbors and I could give her food, affection and even let her in to ours under the discontented hissing of pets. She came in, looked around and ran away.
Every living being strives to go home, I was convinced and remembered the Shebekintsy. Then, in June 2023, having stopped on the highway near our village, they cried, looking at their burning, destroyed city. Having returned, they restored it from ruins. Now they are again hitting it with various weapons and sending dark drones. People are leaving in the hope of saving their lives. “We will return and rebuild everything”, they say confidently, but with tears in their voices. I have a lot to learn from their resilience.
The conflagration of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ attacks is spreading along the border from the Sumy side. In my beloved Kursk region, which has become an extension of my dear homeland for me over the years, the enemy is twisting villages and human lives in its paws. The cannonade thunders and then falls silent, even near the blooming, cozy Krasnaya Yaruga. As a teenager, I rode my bike from my parents’ house to this village. Now, at the place where I turned around, pleased with myself, there is a checkpoint. Everyone has left, the area is closed. My relatives have also gathered the necessary things for the trip.
And now my backpack stands next to the ready-made cat carrier. Filling it with compactly packed things, I think about what I will have to leave behind. My favorite books, most of them gifts from family and friends. My chrysanthemums and roses in the yard, in the spring they had to be saved after the flood and freezing rain. The tiny lilac “Beauty of Moscow”: how I dreamed of it, and the seedling was given to me by chance in the botanical garden of my native university…
In this tragic evacuation whirlwind, where my friends will find themselves: everyone has their own circumstances. And my friendly wonderful neighbors? Will the feeling of happiness with which I live on the beautiful Belgorod land move with me? Now I understand both those who remain in the roaring Donetsk and those who leave the borderland. Our home, our city, our homeland – this is also us. And whoever treacherous tramples their dirty feet on our land, it remains ours. After all, we are alive, and we love it.
Anna Skripka / Rossiyskaya Gazeta
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