According to Leonid Pasechnik, the head of the LPR’s Moscow-appointed government,
“munitions have accidentally been released” over the town of Rubizhne.
A Russian warplane dropped a 250-kg bomb carrying a high-explosive warhead.
No casualties have been reported.
But the current woeful state of the “liberated” town may suggest there aren’t a lot of residents
or buildings to be affected.
That’s the state of most cities and towns of the Russian-speaking Donbas liberated
by Vladimir Putin from “the repression of the Kyiv regime.”
An accidentally dropped bomb will no longer make much of a difference.
Which can’t be said of the Russian cities and villages.
In the early days of 2024, a Russian missile accidentally dropped on Petropavlovka, Voronezh Region.
Four residents were injured.
At least nine buildings were destroyed.
On Apr. 20, 2023, two 500-kg Russian bombs landed in Belgorod and another one in Golovchino,
Belgorod Region.
Had they denoted, they could have killed hundreds and rendered it one
of the worst disasters in modern Russian history.
But in the Belgorod Region, the disaster is already unfolding.
Starting in early 2023, the region has been beleaguered with shells, mines, or Ukrainian loitering munitions.
Only the worst outcomes make it to federal media, such as the Dec. 30 shelling of Belgorod, killing 25.
But other than that, the locals and their troubles are barely mentioned,
like the characters of the popular 1990s movie about the Chechen War, Damned & Forgotten.
DAMNED & FORGOTTEN
One of the worst parts of wars is that death becomes a routine occurrence.
In peaceful times, an untimely death is an extraordinary event.
If a guy gets killed at a construction site, the scene will be swarmed by first responders,
intelligence agencies, and law enforcement.
The foreman will be subjected to thorough interrogation. The site will be cordoned off and rigorously inspected.
If 15 people get killed at a construction site, it’ll make federal news.
Top prosecutors and investigators will be all over the place and all over the media.
The foreman, the owner, and a bunch of other guys will end up in jail.
Conversely, war rhymes with death.
Death is routinized in the minds of both active-duty servicemembers and the audience.
Suddenly, you see a deluge of social media posts about the collateral damage being a normal thing.
And while civilian deaths are still capable of sending a chill down a few spines two years into the conflict,
battlefield fatalities certainly are no longer.
No one cares about the details of these nameless deaths. Like, it’s part of their job description.
This shift in perception is a major ramification of a war. It’s a throwback to a previous century.
Suddenly, an era that champions human life, well-being, proper nutrition,
and more exciting entertainment gives way to a time
where the death toll is only a matter of boots on the grounds.
Regular people know full well how it works.
We once showed you a videotaped survey conducted by Current Time TV the day the war started.
It featured residents of Rostov-on-Don, another large city sitting close to the Ukraine border,
weighing in on the implications of the special operation.
The response of this woman seemed shocking at the time. It still rings true today.
What’s your take on the Ukraine war?
I hate it. It’s a shame Russia has started this war. It’ll be disastrous for us. We live close to the border.
She’s not a general or a maverick geostrategist. She’s just being reasonable.
She knows that a war is a two-way affair.
If you’re waging a war against a large neighboring state, you’ll sometimes be on the receiving end, too.
That woman from the region bordering Ukraine got it 100% right hours into the special operation. “It’ll be disastrous for us.”
On Feb. 25, the Ukrainian army struck the Russian air base in Millerovo, Rostov Region.
On Apr. 1, Ukrainian attack helicopters struck an oil depot in Belgorod. Back then, it was a shocker.
Save for the 1969 Sino–Soviet border conflict, it was the first time Russian territory had been attacked
by a foreign army since WW2.
It would’ve paid to contemplate the repercussions of that special operation to “protect Russia’s security”
already early into the hostilities.
The operation caused a host of missiles and bombs land on Russian soil that had been safe for 80 years.
Explosions in Russian towns and cities are only mentioned in passing by the regional media.
Russia’s top dogs have put millions of Russians living in the border regions in harm’s way
and now make sure the rest of the country is oblivious to their ills.
A strike on downtown Belgorod that occurred on Dec. 30 was an outlier, though.
The shelling was such a big of a deal, it just couldn’t be ignored.
But not a single word was reported about the power outages in the two Belgorod villages
or the strike on the vehicular bridge that resulted in three locals being injured.
Mind you, it all happened days before the New Year’s Eve shelling.
It happens all the time, but the media remain tight-lipped.
Shebekino is a town in the Belgorod Region where dozens of people get killed or wounded
every once in a while.
To get a mere shred of the federal spotlight, the local residents recorded a series
of videos and even launched the hashtag #ShebekinoIsRussia.
We can no longer tolerate it. Shebekino, Belgorod Region, is being shelled every single day.
Kids and adults alike are terrified. People get killed and injured. No steps are being taken to prevent it.
We aren’t Luhansk.
We aren’t from the Donbas. We are part of Russia. Why are we disregarded and treated that miserably?
But the mainstream media are turning a blind to Shebekino’s plight.
They can’t even pronounce the name of the town, calling it Shmekino or Shmyakino. But who cares, right?
We’re forced to abandon our homes and leave for other regions. We’re forced to rent apartments.
We’re being shelled every single day. People get killed. People get injured. The authorities are taking no action.
FACING DISASTER
Recently, Dmitry Medvedev, who is the official chairman of United Russia,
the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council, and the Deputy Chairman
of the Military-Industrial Committee, posted an irate statement on the French authorities’ response
to the shelling of Belgorod.
To slam the French, he used a variety of his trademark slurs and expletives,
such as “frogs, scum, bastards, and a__holes.” That’s a quote.
True, the French authorities aren’t exactly prone to shedding tears over the Russian city.
Believe it or not, they seem to be more preoccupied with French people and French cities.
But the thing is, the Russian authorities don’t care much about the Russian cities, either.
Eleven months before the disaster struck, Current Time ran a piece titled
“If They Decide to Bomb Us, They’ll Blow Us to Smithereens.”
In this article, a young Belgorod resident shares what seems to be the prevailing sentiment.
It turns out the further fate of Belgorod, Russia’s regional center, is being decided in Kyiv, not in Moscow.
How come? After all, Vladimir Putin keeps telling everyone that Ukraine is run
by a gang of sadists, neo-Nazis, and Banderites.
We don’t agree with the assessment, but let’s grant it for the sake of the argument.
If Ukraine is a Nazi state and its army is the Wehrmacht 2.0, didn’t you expect them
to shell the Russian cities and villages?
You set out to crush what you brand as the “ultimate evil” obsessed with exterminating the Russians,
but why didn’t you ensure the safety and security of those within their reach?
You’ve wiped out a number of Ukrainian cities and towns, including Popasna, Severodonetsk, and Maryinka.
You’ve been shelling Kyiv and Odesa.
You’ve wrecked one in five buildings in Kharkiv 50 miles away from Russia’s Belgorod.
What made you think you’d never be on the receiving end?
You claim Zelenskyy is a Nazi and a dangerous drug addict,
but you act as if he were a Christian saint who loves his enemies.
You don’t need to be a top KGB officer to realize the dangers of a large-scale continental war.
Why, then, didn’t Putin, the guy with a KGB background, order that the residents of an imperiled area be resettled?
Why didn’t anyone lift a finger to protect the Russians in the border regions
when the special operations devolved into a full-blown war?
In a sense, Putin’s system is one of a kind.
In times of peace, it insists that people brave the negative repercussions of the Kremlin’s dubious decisions.
But once things go sideways, whether it’s COVID or the shelling of Russian cities,
it suddenly goes under the radar.
It invokes federalism and engages in radical libertarianism, shifting the responsibility
onto regional authorities.
“We never turn our backs on our lot!”— these catchy slogans suddenly fade into obscurity.
ABANDONED
“Why would you give up on us?” has been the recurrent question posed by the befuddled Belgorod residents
for over a year now. If anything, the clamor has intensified following the Dec. 30 shelling.
The local authorities who were put in charge offer some consolation.
Like, we’ll evacuate and accommodate everyone who needs help.
But this consolation is aimed at the rest of the country.
People are supposed to think these guys have their backs.
In May 2023, Shebekino residents finally caught a break.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the Governor of the Belgorod Region,
announced that 600 people will be evacuated to the three specific regions and another 900 to another three regions.
Belgorod vowed to accommodate 1,000 Shebekino residents. Sounds like a plan, right?
It may, but Shebekino is home to 40,000 residents, while the population of the metropolitan area is north of 85,000.
It’s unclear what the vast majority of them are supposed to do.
Currently, the authorities are evacuating hundreds of Belgorod residents, as the situation is life-threatening.
But Belgorod is home to over 330,000 people, and the population of the metropolitan area is estimated
at over 500,000.
Every one of them has someone they know who knows someone who’s been either killed or wounded.
But 99% of them have nowhere to go.
The authorities instruct the locals to duct-tape their windows in an X-shaped pattern
to mitigate glass breakage.
They vow to unlock the bomb shelters and to make sure air raid sirens go off before the attacks,
and not after the damage is done.
We must admit that, the personal qualities and the political acumen of the Belgorod authorities aside,
they can only do so much. They can’t stop this war.
Now, Vladimir has three options of how to deal with the residents of those border regions.
One is to evacuate 100s of thousands or even millions of people further inland.
Another option is to routinize civilian deaths, just as was the case with mobilized recruits.
Option number three is to stop the war against Ukraine.
It’s our job to prevent the routinization of deaths in our country and the sugarcoating of Belgorod’s tragic plight.
The rest of our country is equally important. Dead soldiers hail from all over the place.
We should keep emphasizing the price Russia is paying to keep the pointless war effort afloat.
Soviet diplomat Andrei Gromyko once said that 10 years of negotiations is better than one year of war.
Two years into the war, everyone begins to realize the real meaning of the quote.
The folks who were loving parents and spouses 684 days ago can now be caught devaluing human lives.
Like, yeah, things happen, a war means inevitable deaths. May all of us stay safe, and let’s move on.
Some get embroiled in the ideology of war even deeper and are pleased whenever
a missile strikes a maternity ward or a public space and kills random people because
they think the other side are fascists.
This war can only be stopped by the Russian public if it says no to Vladimir Putin and his war.
But to be able to do this, we first need to reflect on what’s really going on.
We’ve been fighting Ukraine for almost two years.
We’ve razed countless cities and towns that were once home to people just like us.
Our army is striking Ukraine on a daily basis.
Our defense contractors are hard at work manufacturing the shells and missile that are meant to kill Ukrainians.
Ukrainians, on the other hand, are getting modern Western armaments and hardware to strike back.
It’s only happening because Putin wanted this war and has yet to come up with a sound reason.
Belgorod is already in flames.
The war will be making its way to other cities and towns in Russia.
How come it’s happening? How come we don’t oppose it?
See you tomorrow!