On the second anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine conflict breaking out, we came back to Russia's Belgorod region. It is located in western Russia, along the border with Ukraine.
The city of Belgorod is just 70 kilometers away from Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkov. We were here, back in February 2022, on the eve of the beginning of what the Russians call its "special military operation in Ukraine."
There was a lot of military activity back then, but people we spoke to weren't concerned that the bullets would start flying there. They lived their usual daily lives, dealing with the daily routines.
Now, fast forward to February this year, we came to revisit some places and speak with locals again, to find out what has changed for them in the past two years.
People mourn victims during a commemoration ceremony marking 40 days since a deadly military strike in Belgorod on February 7, 2024. /Reuters
Shebekino was one of the towns in the Belgorod region that we revisited. The town of around 40,000 residents saw serious shelling from the Ukrainian side at the start of last June. According to footage from that time, and eyewitness accounts, parts of the city were turned into flaming ruins.
The mayor, Sergey Bocharnikov, told us there were no military targets in the city, and showed us his office, which also suffered damage. One piece of shrapnel is still in his office refrigerator.
"By the marks, we can easily see that the shrapnel has hit the ceiling," Sergey told us. "If you look here, the shrapnel, which was already falling, has hit the refrigerator, and look, it stayed there. Just melted into this."
Reconstruction work in the town was completed quite quickly, so there was almost no damage left to see. And many people who fled back then have since returned. One such returnee is Yusifov Yusif Dzavadagle, an Azerbaijan native, who owns a clothes shop at the Shebekino market.
"We left back then and didn't come back for a month and a half," said Dzavadagle. "Then we returned here and continued with our lives. We expect good things to happen. If it isn't like that, then we won't be living here anymore."
People gather near a heavily damaged shopping centre hit by a Ukrainian military attack in Belgorod on February 15, 2024. /Reuters
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After Shebekino, we drove to the picturesque Russian village of Yablonovo. It was a nearby field where a huge Russian air force cargo plane crashed after it was shot down by what the Russians say was a Ukrainian missile.
The crash site is some 60 kilometers from the border with Ukraine. It's another sign of how deep into Russian territory this conflict has spread. Russian sources say 65 Ukrainian prisoners-of-war were on the flight. There were no survivors. After the incident, local villagers are mostly afraid of the cameras, but one babushka who told us how she experienced that crash.
She said: "It was horrible. Black smoke, and then a fireball, and that was it. And then, just recently, they came to take the remains - not the bodies, but the plane. It was so horrible. Just horrible."
It is the horror of the conflict that petrifies the people I spoke to in the Belgorod region. And on the second anniversary of the "special military operation," all of them want just one thing: peace.
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