Russia Evacuates 300 Residents from Belgorod

Russia has evacuated around 300 residents from the city of Belgorod, authorities announced on Monday.

The governor of the region said people had decided to leave after Ukrainian strikes on the city in recent weeks.

"Some 300 residents of Belgorod, who decided to temporarily evacuate, are at the moment being housed in temporary shelter centers in Stary Oskol, Gubkin and the Korochansky district" which are further from the border, Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a video posted on Telegram.

“Over the past 24 hours we received 1,300 requests to send Belgorod children to school camps away from the city, in other regions,” he added.

Belgorod city lies about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the border with Ukraine and the evacuation comes less than a week after Russian authorities said shelling in the city killed 25 people.

The Ukrainian attack followed a massive bombardment by Moscow across Ukraine, the largest such attack since the first weeks of the conflict, which killed 30 people.

The Kremlin has tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy on the home front, but recent deadly strikes on Belgorod have brought the Ukraine conflict closer to Russians, AFP reports.

Last week authorities in the city said residents should secure their windows with tape to protect them from shelling.

The wider region has continued to be targeted by Ukrainian forces – a “complex mission” conducted by Ukrainian special forces destroyed two Russian anti-aircraft systems in the Belgorod region on Saturday.

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The Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) released footage of the attack on Sunday, saying it had taken out two Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile complexes, each one valued at around $15m.

In a post on social media, HUR said: “On January 6, 2024, another special operation… took place, aimed at weakening the aggressor state of Russia.

“As part of a complex mission implemented with the assistance of the United24 platform, the operators of ‘Group 999’ of the HUR of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine struck the positions of the Russian air defense in the territory of the Belgorod region.

“As a result of fire damage, 2 Russian anti-aircraft missile-gun complexes Pantsir-S1 were disabled.”