Near the front line, Russians are growing tired of war

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. 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), 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