The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, on Sunday asked all residents of towns bordering Ukraine under (enemy) artillery fire to leave their homes, saying shelling by Ukrainian forces in the region continued last night after two people were killed the previous evening , and hundreds of children were evacuated from the border zone, EFE and Reuters report.

“Listen to the authorities and temporarily leave your homes to save what is most precious to you, your life and the lives of your loved ones,” Gladkov wrote in his Telegram account.

The official explained that his call is aimed not only at the residents of the Shebekino district, which was the most affected by terrorist attacks in recent days, but also at all districts that were bombed.

Thousands of people have already been resettled

According to him, during the night, Ukrainian artillery continued shelling the Shebekino district, as well as the Volokonovsky district, where they suffered significant destruction, but according to preliminary data, there were no casualties.

The governor noted that in the region that borders Ukraine in the south and west, more than 4,000 people have been relocated and are in temporary shelters, mostly in schools and dormitories.

According to Gladkov, on Saturday, two women were killed in the villages of Novaya Tovalyanka and Bezlyudovka of the Sebekin district, and on Friday, five civilians were killed by enemy fire.

Those explosions from across the border, along with incursions by Russian paramilitary groups, have prompted the Russian army and National Guard to tighten security in the area amid growing criticism of the border’s vulnerability.

On Saturday, Gladkov announced the emergency evacuation of 600 children from the border towns of Kaluga and Yaroslavl, and another 1,000 will be sent to the annexed Crimean peninsula.

The Belgorod region feels more and more what war is like

The reality of the war unleashed by Moscow in Ukraine in February 2022 is increasingly felt in Russia with increased bombing of border regions, as well as airstrikes inside the country, in particular earlier this week on Moscow.

At the end of May, the Russian army announced that it had repelled one of the most serious cross-border attacks by a Ukrainian “sabotage group”, which it said had infiltrated the territory of Russia’s Belgorod region.

Ukraine denied a drone attack on Moscow earlier this week and denied that its military took part in the raids in Belgorod, saying they were carried out by Russian volunteers.

Shebekino, a town of 40,000 on the border with Ukraine, and other towns in Belgorod have recently come under several attacks, with Governor Gladkov telling Russian media that the region is now living in “real conditions of war”.

Moscow calls the invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation,” not a war, and says it launched it to protect Russia from the threat of Ukraine’s westward movement. Kyiv and its allies claim that this is an unprovoked aggression aimed at conquering new territories.