Russia’s Kursk residents fled Kyiv onslaught ‘at last moment’

Copyright AFP TATYANA MAKEYEVA

Hastily evacuated from their home in Russia’s Kursk region in the face of Ukraine’s offensive, Galina Tolmacheva and her husband Andrei endlessly checked their phone for news.

“We don’t really know where to go,” said Galina, a 50-year-old postwoman.

She told AFP that she and her husband had waited until “the last moment” to flee their house on August 19, along with their three children, aged 9, 13 and 30.

“There wasn’t anyone left in the village any more,” said Galina, who lived in Alexandrovka, a small settlement about 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the border with Ukraine.

Ukrainian armed forces launched a large-scale surprise offensive into Russia’s Kursk region on August 6, with Kyiv saying its goal is to create a “buffer zone” to protect civilians living near the border, as well as put pressure on Moscow to agree to “fair talks”.

Ukraine claims to have taken control of 100 settlements in nearly one month, pushing 130,000 Russian civilians to evacuate.

The Tolmachev family waited to leave until “shells were falling right under the porch and in the vegetable patch, too,” said Galina. 

At that point, they had to leave “everything” as they were forced to evacuate by the Russian army.

Like many locals, they owned chickens, goats and rabbits.

“We set free all our livestock. We left the tractor, the car, our vegetable patch. Basically everything got left behind. We fled in just what we stood up in,” said Galina.

Her mother was also evacuated, but she was already in poor health and died shortly afterwards.

– ‘No one was told’ –

Since August 19 they have been staying at a large temporary reception centre set up by Moscow authorities in what used to be a supermarket, in an area of the Kursk region safe from the fighting, which AFP was able to visit.

The undisclosed location currently hosts 400 people, including 50 children, said Nikita Miroshnichenko, the centre’s manager. They sleep in rows of makeshift beds.

Psychologists are providing counselling while daily activities such as entertainment for children and video games are organised, the manager told AFP, as a way to pass the time and boost morale.

Residents have found ways to occupy themselves — some were reading or eating, others were doing laundry or putting on makeup.

But few were talkative and their faces showed signs of fatigue and tension.

Andrei Tolmachev, a 45-year-old tractor driver, said he was “satisfied” with the centre but was critical of local authorities, whom he said had not informed people about Ukraine’s incursion or helped with evacuation.

“Basically no one was informed,” he said, and people found out “from the Internet, from friends and acquaintances, from relatives”.

“All the local people say that our local administration just abandoned us.”

The couple fell silent, struggling with emotions as they re-lived events of the last few days.

Facing unhelpful local authorities and a lack of humanitarian aid, Andrei said he and his wife had picked up water, bread and canned food from abandoned shops and distributed them to elderly residents who had not evacuated and to soldiers on the front line.

In one neighbouring village, residents had “no electricity or water”, he said.

While Kyiv has said it does not want to occupy the territory that its troops have taken in Russia, Galina expressed her fears: “We don’t know what has happened to our house”.

“If it’s still standing, we hope to go back.”