“End this damned war, which has taken so many innocent lives,” an elderly man says in an online video clip, blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for the situation he and those standing with him find themselves in. He stands in front of some 50 fellow villagers displaced from Olgovka, in western Russia’s Kursk region, as he reads from their letter denouncing Putin’s war against Ukraine. “We’ve been left homeless,” he continues. “We’ve been living in hell over the past three months.”
“Some of our neighbors were killed. Some are missing since an evacuation order was never given,” he said, calling the situation in the war-torn village like “scenes from a horror film.”
Over 150,000 civilians in the Kursk region were forced to evacuate in early August after a surprise cross-border incursion by Ukrainian forces. Months later, nearly 40 separate videos have appeared on the popular Russian social media site VKontakte, telling Putin to end his “cursed war.” His regime tries to suppress all opposition at home by banning use of the word “war,” insisting Moscow’s nearly three-year-old invasion of Ukraine be called a “special military operation.”
“Listen to the people of the borderland,” the man from Olgovka added, who “want our children to live in peace, not to constantly hear air raid sirens.” They pointed out that “after all, we’re forced to endure all this not by our own will.”
In the first week of November, displaced residents from the Sudzhansky and Bolshesoldatsky districts staged “unauthorized” demonstrations in the regional capital of Kursk over the failure of local authorities to find them suitable accommodations. They were told it could take up to five years to rebuild and they haven’t received any promised compensation for their destroyed properties.