Fleeing from the Ukrainian army in Kursk: “Putin…

140,000 people have fled to safety from the Ukrainian army offensive. In Kursk, refugees line up for mattresses and medicine. Sirens wail every hour. PRESS correspondent Ina Hartwich reports from Kursk.

They come here every evening, sitting on black chairs in front of the bright brick front door, the trees around them blowing in the wind, the children running in front of them. Lyubov and Yelena lean back and sometimes laugh so loudly that their gold teeth flash. “We cheer each other on here,” says Yelena, 69. “As soon as I get back in the room, sadness comes. The memory of the impacts, the escape, the animals I left behind. Terrible, all of it.” Lyubov looks down. “I can’t sleep, I hear the drones, I jump at every siren. I’d rather be here, with people I didn’t know until a few days ago, but who are now kind of like my family,” says the 68-year-old.

Lyubov and Yelena from Sudzha, just nine kilometres from the Ukrainian border, are refugees. In your country. They have been given a place in a student dormitory at the Kursk Agricultural University. Yelena shares a room with her son and grandson Lyubov with two people they did not know until a few days ago. They eat here three times a day, and they have a roof over their heads. “We get enough attention here. But back home, our state didn’t care about us. We are nobody to them, they just left us to our fate for a few days,” Lyubov complains and worries: “The new semester is about to start. Where will we be taken when the students move into their rooms? Nobody tells us about it.”

140 thousand people are on the run