The Case of the Missing City: Belgorod, Russia
Now you see it, now you don't
The city of Belgorod has always been an outlier in Russian society. Almost in Ukraine, many of the town’s residents tended to be both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian. Today, it is hard to say who the “Belgoridians” support because, in official Russia, the city doesn’t exist. It has vanished.
Over 300 aerial assaults of some kind take place each month in Belgorod, and if you ask the average person from St. Petersburg — which I do — what they know about the situation in Belgorod, here is the typical answer: “I heard they got shelled back in December a bit, but otherwise things seem to be normal. The army has gotten it back under control…but who really knows, you know? Why have you heard something else?”
I asked this question yesterday of a friend who is doing all she can to remain off the radar in Russia — she had a baby less than a year ago and did not need the attention of the fascist government. She said she knew little about what was happening other than to say it was “simply unbelievable what has happened to our country.” When she said “our,” she meant mine, too. I have known her for 20 years, and she knows how much I tried to do in my own little and not-so-little ways to make Russia a better place.
Rockets, missiles, and drones are the main dangers Belgorod residents face — not bullets. According to the former soldier, real bomb shelters are the only effective protection against these kinds of attacks. But despite the fact that the city regularly comes under fire, the local authorities have neither increased the number of bomb shelters nor ensured that existing ones are open. As air raid sirens sound, many residents have fled to basement shelters only to find them locked, BBC News Russian reported. On the door — a note with the phone number of a person or company with the key (Safety Theater).
It’s almost as if the Kremlin has written off the city’s fate because it knows that it can. If the flow of information is blocked and the truth can be woven to align with any narrative, why bother wasting resources on defending the city and the region? There is nothing of strategic importance, and the size of the invading liberation forces is so small that they can’t cause much harm to the Kremlin’s overall mission. Belgorod and the small battles in the region are little more than like the pesky fly that keeps causing the grazing cow to shake its head in frustration.
According to Meduza, the money earmarked for the town’s “defense” — a little less than $500,000 — seems to have been nothing but a buy-off of the local authorities. “Here, take this and buy yourselves some nice new cars or fix up the dachas.” The money was supposed to be invested in reinforcing buildings and bus stops, but of the 146 addresses earmarked for “protection,” one has been fortified over the past three months.
“They set up sandbags and said, ‘You can hide behind them if there’s shelling.’ But in reality, it’s just nonsense. A sandbag will only stop small bullets or shrapnel,” a former Russian special forces soldier told iStories on condition of anonymity. “Moreover, they aren’t even placed around the entire perimeter of the bus stop. On one side, there are sandbags, and on the other, thin metal walls that even rubber bullets can pierce. It’s just safety theater. Total nonsense with no meaning whatsoever.”
Belgorod residents themselves complain that the sandbags are useless and poorly installed. “Is it possible to somehow replace this shelter with a concrete one? There’s no way to take cover in this. All the bags have fallen apart,” a local woman wrote to the mayor. At another bus stop, the sandbags were stacked so unstably that they fell and broke the glass enclosure. Residents complained that this “protective structure” turned out to be a hazard itself (Safety Theater).
As is so typical in Russia, a country proudly celebrating the year of the family, everything is done “through the ass (cherez zhou),” which means haphazardly, hastily, last-minute, and with little sense of pride in one’s work. When an official delegation comes along with the media in tow and berates a poorly paid worker for having done such a shoddy and irresponsible job, the beaten-down man will likely accept the punishment but then later be rewarded for taking the blame.
If, however, the worker chooses to speak up and tell the truth about why he did such a poor job— “We were given one hour to do work that should take two days to complete and provided almost no materials to make the shelter. This is the best we could do given the resources and time.” — then the visiting official will turn his anger toward the local administration. He will huff and puff and talk about how heads will roll for such incompetence until the camera lights are turned off. Then, the man who dared to speak up will be punished because his telling of the truth, something the vast majority of Russians choose not to acknowledge lest they too be punished, threatens to bring the whole, vast, rotten-to-the-core corrupt system crashing down.
This is why Belgorod no longer exists in Russia today. Now you see it — blow on Putin’s hand — and now you don’t — Russian magic.