“No place is safe”: concern is growing in Belgorod, a large city in Russia where Ukrainian strikes have intensified in recent days, pushing the authorities to evacuate nearly 400 children on Wednesday. From this Wednesday, for a period of “21 days”, “392 schoolchildren will leave Belgorod for school facilities in other regions: 112 children will rest in the Voronezh region, 280 (in that of) Kaluga” , announced the town hall of this town of some 335,000 inhabitants located near the border with Ukraine.
In total, “1,300 schoolchildren are ready to leave the Belgorod region,” she added. “The first group of children was sent from Belgorod to the Voronezh region,” the governor of the eponymous region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, declared on Telegram. This official specified that over the next three weeks, these children would participate in several educational and leisure activities.
Postponement of the start of the school year in Belgorod until January 19
This decision comes a few days after the evacuation of 300 people following the increase in Ukrainian attacks and the announcement of the postponement of the start of the school year to January 19. The nighttime celebrations of Orthodox Christmas from January 6 to 7 had also been canceled. Belgorod is less than 40 kilometers from the border with Ukraine and on the front line of that country’s attacks on Russian soil.
The day after Russian strikes on Ukrainian territory on December 29 which caused the death of dozens of people, Belgorod was the target of a Ukrainian attack which left 25 dead, the heaviest civilian death toll on Russian soil since the start of the conflict on February 24, 2022. In response, Vladimir Putin promised that his country would “intensify” the strikes, his army continuing its massive raids on kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, like January 2 and 8 .
In recent days, other Russian regions bordering Ukraine, such as Kursk and Oriol, as well as annexed Crimea and other occupied areas in Ukraine, have been hit by Ukrainian bombing.