Anti-Kremlin militias attacked ahead Russia’s presidential election aiming to show that Vladimir Putin can’t protect his country but residents said the strategy was backfiring.
BELGOROD, Russia — As polling stations opened across Russia on Friday for a three-day presidential election that Vladimir Putin is certain to win, a volley of Ukrainian missiles crashed into the western city of Belgorod, damaging apartment buildings and injuring at least two people as thousands of residents scrambled, yet again, for shelter.
“These b------s are hammering us, but they can’t scare me! I’ll just make myself up again tomorrow and go and vote for Putin,” said Yanna, 55, with one eye on the latest news from Russia’s main state TV channel as she and Mikhail drank vodka and ate pickles. A medic in Belgorod’s territorial defense forces, who was wearing a mask, said the attacks had made him more motivated to fulfill his civic duty.
As air-raid sirens blared and the dark streaks of a second attack cut across the sky Friday afternoon, people stopped their cars and ran to the nearest shelter, where they waited in tense silence for air defenses to stop firing. A few minutes before 9 a.m. Wednesday, Egor Gikalo had just sat down to work at his computer when suddenly a drone hit the roof, causing a huge explosion. The windows on the north side of his fifth-floor apartment all blew out. Gikalo, 25, was unhurt. Luckily, he had just pulled a sheet across the window to keep the sunlight off his screen.
Svetlana, who is being identified by first name only because she feared repercussions for speaking to a Western reporter, said that there had been noticeably fewer customers in recent days and that people were scared to go out. The interview was cut short by four security guards who demanded documentation and said journalists were not permitted to work there.Normality mingles with signs of collective stress and a city genuinely under siege.
One fighter, interviewed on a video call, said that his group wanted to show that elections in Russia are “fundamentally illegitimate” and that it planned to “liberate our homeland.” The fighter is not being identified because of security concerns, Pressed to explain the situation, some point to Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution in 2014. The war, they say, is the logical result of a decade of tensions with Ukraine. Others give a string of explanations without evidence — from rumors of American laboratories and NATO bases located near the border, to stories of Ukrainians persecuting Russian-speakers.
Nearby, soft toys and candles have been placed by the city’s eternal-flame war memorial in honor of five children who died in a huge strike on Dec. 30. that killed 25 people.
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