In the Shadow of War: A Cross-Border Offensive and Its Aftermath

They had been caught off guard, and what they never imagined could happen did. “Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich; we are citizens of the Russian Federation, from the Kursk region and the Suzhda district; on the 6th of August, foreign troops with NATO military equipment entered our city; within hours it was reduced to ruins… we have lost our land, our homes…,” a Russian woman proclaimed in a video spread across social networks. She became the accidental spokesperson for a group of about twenty adults evacuated from towns near the Ukrainian border, places that, at that moment, were either already under Kyiv’s control or were the scene of fierce fighting.