Damaged cars are seen in front of a kindergarten following fresh aerial attacks in Belgorod on March 20.STRINGER/Getty Images
A Russian border region being pounded by Ukrainian shelling and drones is expanding its closure of schools and colleges amid a major evacuation plan, authorities announced Wednesday, as Kyiv’s forces extend their campaign of long-range strikes that aim to put the Kremlin under pressure.
Ukraine lacks ammunition supplies along the 1,000-kilometre front line because of a shortfall in promised Western supplies, which is one of the main factors forcing its army to take a more defensive stance. But at the same time, it’s attacking oil facilities deep inside Russia and seeking to unnerve Russia’s border regions.
Some Belgorod schools near the border will close early before school holidays, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov announced, after Ukraine shelling continued to cause deaths and injuries among the local population.
Schools in and around the city of Belgorod will close Wednesday through Friday, he said. Also, universities and colleges will switch to remote learning, and clubs and cultural, sports and other educational institutions will stay closed.
The measures were announced a day after the Governor unveiled plans to evacuate about 9,000 children from the region and several days after a rubber-stamp presidential election in Russia in which President Vladimir Putin extended his rule in a landslide.
Despite the attacks, the official voting turnout in the Belgorod region was 87 per cent, and Mr. Putin officially captured 90.66 per cent of the vote, which has been described as a sham by Ukraine and its Western allies.
Ukraine’s attacks on Russian soil have embarrassed the Kremlin. A Dec. 30 artillery strike on the centre of Belgorod city killed 21 people, including three children, local officials said.
Mr. Putin vowed Wednesday to provide support for Belgorod civilians who have lost their homes and businesses.
“There is a lot to do and we will do everything which depends on us,” he said at a televised meeting at the Kremlin. “Of course, the primary task is to ensure safety. There are different ways to do this. They are not easy, but we will do it.”
Russia’s Defence Ministry said that it intercepted 13 Ukrainian rockets over the Belgorod region around midmorning Wednesday. Mr. Gladkov, the Governor, said that three people were killed and two others were wounded, including a 17-year-old girl, in “massive shelling” of Belgorod city, the regional capital. He said that 16 people have been killed over the past week alone.
In another possible sign of Kyiv’s strategy, Ukrainian drones targeted the city of Engels, about 800 kilometres east of the border with Ukraine in the Saratov region. An air base for strategic bombers is near the city.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said that it took down four drones over the Saratov region.
Long-range strikes on Russia are “a cost-effective way to create challenges for the Russian state,” said Michael Kofman, a military expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Without more Western help, however, “Russian advantages will mount,” Mr. Kofman wrote on X, formerly Twitter, late Tuesday. “The risk of a Russian breakthrough (on the front line) in the second half of the year rises dramatically” unless support arrives, he said.
The European Union is moving ahead with a plan to use the profits generated from billions of euros of Russian assets frozen in Europe to help provide weapons and other funds for Ukraine. EU leaders are expected to endorse the plan at a summit in Brussels starting Thursday.
But the United States is Ukraine’s crucial military supplier, and U.S. Congress remains stalled over funding to send additional weapons to the front.
The U.S. has repeatedly pledged to stand by Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” but Washington’s failure to do so leaves Ukraine at the mercy of Russia’s much bigger and better provisioned army, analysts say.
Meanwhile, the Czech government has pressed ahead with a plan to source from around the world large amounts of artillery shells, which Ukraine desperately needs. Officials say they have confirmed purchases for 300,000 shells and promises for another 200,000.
The Czech government’s national security adviser, Tomas Pojar, said that Ukraine should get the first of those shells in June at the latest.
In other developments, four people were killed and five others were wounded in a Russian attack on Kharkiv city in northeastern Ukraine, according to Mayor Ihor Terekhov. Rescuers were searching for people under the rubble amid a huge blaze.
Also, a 74-year-old school worker in northeastern Ukraine’s Sumy region was killed in a Russian air strike on Tuesday, the Prosecutor General’s Office said. Russian troops destroyed a school and house in a border village.
A Russian service member stands guard at a checkpoint near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, in the Zaporizhzhia region, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on June 15, 2023.ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/Reuters
Separately, speaking before the release of a comprehensive UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) report on the territories Russia occupied in its full-scale invasion since 2022, the mission’s head, Danielle Bell, said Russia’s breaches of rights there were used to terrify local residents into co-operating.
“These combined actions of censorship, surveillance, political oppression, repression of free speech, movement restrictions … created a climate of fear in which the Russian Federation could systematically dismantle the Ukrainian systems of government and administration,” she said in an interview.
The Russian diplomatic mission in Geneva did not respond to questions on the report’s main accusations.
Speaking at the UN Human Rights Council after the report’s publication, Russian senior diplomat Igor Sergeev accused UN human rights bodies of double standards and of turning a blind eye to violations committed by Kyiv.
Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations that its forces have committed atrocities or deliberately attacked civilians during the invasion, which it says is a “special military operation.”
Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and its proxy separatist groups occupied two regional capitals in east Ukraine in the same year. The 2022 invasion led to Moscow’s capture of further swathes of land in Ukraine’s east and south.
It currently controls more than 17 per cent of Ukraine’s territory, where several million people remain.
The UN monitors had no access to occupied territory, but instead based their findings on more than 2,300 interviews with people who were living in occupied territories, had left occupied territory, or lived in liberated areas.
Ms. Bell said there had been an initial phase of rights violations, including killings, torture and arbitrary detention of those perceived to be linked to Ukrainian security forces or those believed to be supporting Ukraine.
That was followed by campaigns against freedoms of movement, assembly and expression, she said. These were followed by a push to change all major state institutions into Russian ones, something Ms. Bell said violated international humanitarian law.
That effort saw schools forced to switch to the Russian language and curriculum, and the justice system jailing people in Russian prisons. Civil servants had been forced to comply with these new systems, she said.
Ms. Bell gave the example of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, where she said workers were forced to continue to work even if they did not want to.
“When they resisted, they faced threats, intimidation harassment, threats against their families, and some even faced arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and in some cases … death.”
Ms. Bell said Russia aggressively pushed people to take Russian citizenship: people could obtain services such as health care, social security or rented housing only with a Russian passport.
Ms. Bell said residents in occupied areas were encouraged to spy on each other, and online services had been created for this.
Ms. Bell also said Russia had sought to cut communication links between Ukrainians in occupied areas and those in territories controlled by Kyiv. Combined with families not being allowed to travel back and forth to see loved ones, this kept relatives “cut off from each other,” she said.