Kursk, autumn 2024. In a makeshift aid center on the first floor of a school, volunteers sort through mountains of clothing. Refugees from border villages queue – people who until recently had their own homes, farms and familiar lives. One woman in her forties rummages through the coats. Suddenly, she lifts her head: “I really left everything there, everything, my whole life!” she says about her village, which she fled in August. Shock is evident in her voice: just a couple of months earlier, it had been hard to imagine Ukrainian troops Russia, but in early August they crossed the border and occupied part of Kursk Region for several days. No one expected war here – now, thousands of families have become refugees in their own country, and Kursk has gone from being a rear city to a frontline one. Air-raid sirens sound almost daily and there are occasional “hits” – shells fall even in residential areas. Life in Kursk has acquired a new reality: soldiers on the streets, roadblocks, evacuation centers and endless conversations about what happened. To understand how the war has changed people’s daily lives and views, two ethnographers went “into the field.” In autumn 2024, they spent about two months in the region, observing events from the inside – volunteering at aid stations, traveling around the region and simply talking to people. 

Research through co-experience

The sociologists had to pass as “one of the crowd” – they volunteered at several humanitarian centers, distributing food, clothing and necessities to refugees. There were many such centers: some organized with government support, others self-organized and some even nominally oppositional. Everywhere there was a shortage of hands, and all help was welcomed. The researchers seamlessly integrated into the environment and gained access to real-life stories. During the day, they distributed rations and met colleagues and victims; in the evenings, they carefully recorded what they heard in ethnographic diaries. There were no formal interviews – locals and refugees were unwilling to “speak on the record,” even anonymously[7][8]. People willingly shared their experiences, but only informally, over a cup of tea or while queuing for humanitarian aid. One rare attempt at an interview ended in a temper tantrum. A researcher, having befriended a fellow volunteer named Sveta, once suggested that she give an anonymous interview for scientific research. Sveta initially demurred: “I do not know how to talk smart… I do not want to go viral.” The sociologist persisted, insisting it was confidential, for a scientific article. But Sveta exploded: “are you nuts? Do not drag me into this, I have enough on my plate as it is!” The researcher backed down, trying to explain that such stories were important “for science and for the future,” but Sveta simply waved her hand: we cannot change anything, there is no point and there is no point in talking about it. This emotion was revealing. Residents of the front-line region, even after the shock of war, did not believe that talking would change anything. They agreed to speak out not because of “big words” or politics, but simply to be heard.

War as a new everyday reality

In Kursk in autumn 2024, war was palpable at every turn. Uniformed men of all ages, armed and unarmed, were everywhere. Military trucks, armored vehicles and helicopters plied the roads and skies. “Near the Central Hotel, I noticed a black car with something on the roof that looked like antennas – probably special communications… I went in to buy a hair tie and saw a soldier in camouflage looking at women’s perfume. ‘They even have them [here]…’ I thought,” one researcher wrote in her diary. For locals, such scenes had become commonplace. Schoolchildren pointed at soldiers: “oh, soldiers! Look!” ten-year-old girls whispered excitedly on the bus.

But the residents of Kursk had learned to ignore the air-raid sirens that blared almost daily. At first, the visiting researcher flinched at every alarm: in her diary, she ironically congratulated herself on starting her job just as the siren wailed upon her arrival in Kursk. Four days later, she noted indifferently: “today I woke up later than usual. While drinking coffee, I heard the siren. I did not react at all – I am already used to it.” The same thing happened to the second researcher in November: after a few days in the city, she wrote that she barely paid attention to the sirens. Most locals indeed did not react – neither to the first alarm nor to the hundredth. No one rushed to hide and visitors to the city quickly adopted a calm, nonchalant attitude. The rare attempts to observe the rules even seemed odd. One October day, when the siren wailed, a researcher spotted a nearby shelter and ducked into it – two giggling schoolgirls ran in with her. When asked if they often took shelter, the girl shook her head in surprise, as if to say “no,” and pointed to her friend, as if to say, “she is afraid, not me.” Even children understood that not reacting was normal, being afraid the exception.

Over time, city residents developed an almost comical attitude toward the alarms. If the danger could not be avoided, they could laugh at it. In conversations at the market or the clinic, Kursk residents discussed shootings and explosions with surprising cheerfulness, cracking jokes. Humor became a kind of shield against fear. At one of the emergency centers, a group of women simply rolled their eyes at the sound of a siren. “Oh my God… the sound [of the siren] is certainly terrifying,” an elderly teacher remarked wearily. A young volunteer named Bogdana smiled and said, “the main thing is [the shells] do not land here.” A friend immediately shushed her, half-jokingly: “Bogdana, knock on wood, you have a bad tongue – no matter what you say, it all comes true!” The girls laughed, and one of them, dancing to the wail of the siren, turned the alarm into a moment of hilarious absurdity. Thus, fear became a game: movement, laughter, bickering – and suddenly anxiety sounded like the backdrop to a joke, not like a signal of mortal danger. City residents called air-defense detonations “fireworks,” and the rare drone explosions “bangs.” At a bus stop, a researcher saw teenagers fooling around, imitating the wail of a siren – as if acting out a scene from a movie. In a Kursk bar, a bartender opened a new barrel of cider, which squealed loudly, frightening the customers. The manager joked, “air raid!” and his colleague Margot joined in, mimicking the alarm: “pew-pew-pew!” The customers laughed. The manifestations of war became fodder for jokes – and some of the anxiety went away. The people of Kursk seemed to be saying: if death is constantly nearby, it is easier to treat it as an element of everyday life, almost like bad weather, which one can laugh at.

Of course, there were aspects of the war that truly infuriated people, as well. A resident of the outskirts of Kursk complained to a researcher: the worst thing was not even the sirens or explosions, but the checkpoints and traffic jams. Every day, the highways were jammed due to military checks, plus refugees in their cars had clogged the roads. “It’s a real mess on the roads,” the young Kursk resident waved his hand. “It’s enough to make you forget about the counterterror operation.” For him, the war manifested itself primarily in more traffic, which infuriated him more than the threat of shelling. The official security measures also irritated him: many perceived the sirens as an annoying noise. “I will not go into those concrete boxes [shelters],” one volunteer snapped during a conversation on a Kursk street. People deliberately ignored orders to shelter – and expected others to do the same. A manicurist told a researcher about her upstairs neighbor: “can you imagine, at one in the morning he’s yelling in his apartment: ‘attention, air raid! get to shelter!’ I yell: ‘stop that yammering, please! I cannot sleep!’” Residents turned off their alert apps and turned their phones facedown to avoid seeing the flashing alert text messages at night. “These text messages at night are annoying,” admitted one interlocutor. “I even put my phone facedown so it does not blink.” Cursing and joking, people built their everyday comforts against the backdrop of the war – as if fencing themselves off from it with elaborate rituals. Many did not even bother installing protective covering on their windows: it was expensive and annoying. “Good covering is expensive, and I live in a rented apartment!” the same manicurist explained with a laugh, discussing physical security as if it were an apartment renovation. In other words, the people of Kursk tried with all their might to live normally – not to think about the risk every minute, not to change their life beyond recognition, not to let the war dictate their daily life.

The grief of refugees: Their lives remain there

Meanwhile, for dozens of families from villages close to the border, life was divided into “before” and “after.” Those who managed to escape from the occupied villages of Kursk Region in autumn 2024 recalled their flight as a natural disaster. Many left behind their homes, farms, livestock, property and sometimes even relatives. Now, they were sheltering with family, in school gyms or renting a room in Kursk. Every day, these people mourned their losses. In conversations with PS Lab researchers, the refugees returned again and again to what the war had taken from them: “the experience of loss became the foundation of refugee identity,” the study’s authors note. One would think people would mourn their loved ones, but most of all they talked about things – those very small, everyday details that made up their former, peacetime lives. A vegetable garden, livestock, a house, photographs, a winter coat – the loss of even such seemingly unimportant things, against the backdrop of war, caused them genuine emotional pain. One elderly man lamented not having drained the water from his heating system before fleeing: “now, god forbid, a frost hits – everything will burst!” Another woman lamented the abandoned harvest: sacks of potatoes remained in her cellar. For these people, these lost things symbolized an entire layer of life – the labor they had invested in their home and farm, the past they had been deprived of, the future now in question. “It’s like we have been left without a clan or tribe. No childhood photos, nothing,” said one young woman, realizing she had not even taken a family album from home when she fled. “It’s a shame there’s no memory.” “One moment – and it’s gone... The clock begins on a different date now,” she sighed, remembering how she had first bought a camera and printed film. Now she did not even have any pictures from her “past life.”

In temporary accommodation camps or apartments housing evacuees, people from the same village found each other and stuck together. Every day, they shared the same stories – who had lost what, who had damage. It was like a collective traumatic ritual: speaking their pain out loud to share it with others. The researchers recall one typical scene in the village of Iglovka: one evening, several displaced people were chatting in the courtyard of a temporary accommodation center. “I had three houses, and all but one are destroyed, one burned completely,” a middle-aged woman said hoarsely. “I have worked all my life. I have three children and I do not know where the eldest is; he does not answer my calls...” Another, named Shura, howled: “our homes are destroyed, burned to the ground, there’s nothing left. A pile of ashes and cinders, only the cemetery remains...” An elderly man added bitterly: “[we have been] deprived of everything. There were six streets – and not a single one remains.” After these words, silence fell. The shared misfortune was too great to dwell on. But after some time, when a volunteer brought warm clothes, one of the men – his name was Semyon – suddenly, while choosing a pea coat, muttered: “I miss my old life... I would be going to work now – today I would come home from work, bathe, do the laundry, cook...” Simple everyday verbs – “went to work,” “cooked something to eat” – sounded like a prayer for the return of normality. Their entire lives remained there, and they dreamed of getting it back. At that time, many believed this was temporary: the front would be pushed back, and they would soon be able to go back. Those whose houses had survived hoped to return in the spring to dig up their garden beds or at least drain radiators. And those whose villages had been wiped off the face of the earth envied them.

The state tried to help the victims, but people were not used to relying on the authorities for help. The refugees received one-off payments and some benefits, but this only underscored the scale of their loss. “Small handouts cannot compensate for the losses,” they said and the very word “compensation” sounded bizarre, forcing them to admit: they could not buy back their old lives. By the following summer, many remained far from home. In August, the refugees planned to hold a symbolic event – to set up in a Kursk square a “displaced person’s home” from items reminiscent of their lost homes: old toys, photographs and sets of keys. This was meant to show the meaning of the word “home.” But the event was ultimately canceled – perhaps because it had not been approved by the authorities. In addition, people’s strength was waning. A year in exile had worn them down. Many were living in hunger, work was hard to find and their savings were dwindling. By autumn 2024, many humanitarian centers were operating in the region, but a year later some had already closed – the resources and enthusiasm of volunteers had dried up. Some initiatives were overseen by the state, others were sustained by sheer enthusiasm, and still others straddled the line between bureaucracy and self-help. The centers were filled both with “professional” volunteers (with experience, sometimes wearing the organization’s branded vests) and with ordinary people who rushed to help out of their hearts. Moreover, local newcomers often avoided the official structures and operated quietly: collecting things from neighbors and delivering groceries to the nearest point themselves. The authorities reported a huge pickup in “volunteer activity,” but in reality, this was a mixture of everything, including money from the budget, a rush of volunteers and even “forced volunteering.” One of the interviewees, Maria, for example, was sent to the assistance center from work: the management had ordered employees to “help refugees,” and she had to distribute clothes for a couple hours a day.

Empathy and disunity

In the first weeks after the raid, it seemed that the shared tragedy would bring people together. Kursk locals did indeed help families they did not know: some sheltered refugees for free, others brought warm clothes or food for abandoned animals. Solidarity ignited, but locally, in pockets, within a small circle.

As researchers note, it was based on a sense of closeness: people helped if they felt “alike.” For example, neighbors in a village who had evacuated together stuck together – “Sudzhans with Sudzhans,” they said, referring to their fellow villagers from the same area. This was certainly solidarity, but very limited, to the confines of a person’s own circle.

For most Kursk residents, the refugees remained strangers. Yes, they sympathized with their grief – how could one not? – but they perceived the displaced people as “them,” not “us.” While helping them, locals simultaneously expressed indignation: the influx of outsiders had disrupted everyday life in Kursk. Conversations among residents increasingly sounded irritated: they seemed to have arrived and taken over everything, living for free. A researcher overheard one such scene in Iglovka: two employees of an aid center were discussing the refugees. The guard listed the benefits and gifts they had received – free housing, food, clothes and money on their cards, she said. The other, who worked with displaced children, nodded. Their tone betrayed resentment: the refugees were privileged. By the end of 2024, Kursk residents’ grievances against the refugees had reached boiling point: they were called “uncultured parasites,” rumors spread that they were looting abandoned houses or demanding special treatment. A volunteer named Rita angrily described some of the displaced people: “they live like consumers, pure consumers. If their towel is ripped, they say, ‘give me a towel!’…” According to her, if they refused, they would complain at another center until they got their way. Such gossip – part rumor, part reality – only deepened the division. Instead of sensing a shared plight, people began to divide further into “us” and “them.” The affected groups ended up competing for what was limited aid, rather than banding together. The shared tragedy became a source of injustice: some received more, some less, and everyone sought to snatch something for themselves. Ultimately, war divides, the report’s authors conclude: empathy does not lead to solidarity if people see each other as strangers.

Yet one common feeling among Kursk residents was undeniable: compassion for the soldiers. “Covert mobilization” was underway in the region; in autumn 2024, many local men were drafted, and the streets of Kursk were filled with soldiers in transit. Both those who lost their homes and those whose homes remained intact looked at these men as fellow victims. Helping the army became a regular, nonpolitical matter: warm clothes were collected for “our boys,” and the wives of mobilized men were supported with money, letters and kind words. Importantly, this was done not because of ideology, not “for Putin,” but simply out of pity for the men who “found themselves at war against their will.” Essentially, people pitied each other – both ordinary soldiers and their suffering neighbors – in a human way, without attempting to understand the larger causes of the war.

‘We just want to go back’

Residents of Kursk, whose yards were ravaged by the actual war, never spoke of it loudly or pompously. Sure, they constantly discussed the “August invasion,” but only on the level of how to flee, how they survived attacks, who was going back to dig potatoes, where to apply for compensation. Residents complained about sirens, and parents about schools switching to remote learning; college students whispered about how to avoid conscription. But no one argued about the causes of the war. At the market, on the bus or at the kitchen table, people did not discuss who was to blame – Russia or Ukraine, Putin or Zelensky – or why it happened at all. Moreover, whenever the researchers asked such a question, their interlocutors became embarrassed and silent. “How did this all actually happen?” the researcher asked a refugee, hoping for some kind of response. But the woman ignored the question, pretending not to hear and continued rummaging through clothes. Any attempt to discuss the causes of the war met with a dead end. People withdrew – losing enthusiasm, changing the subject or even physically removing themselves. It seemed they had nothing to say on the subject and did not want to think about it. “Whenever I tried to bring it to a more abstract level – like, ‘why did the war happen?’ – she immediately got flustered and did not know what to say,” the researcher noted of one refugee.

For them, the war was like a natural disaster – no one was looking to blame anyone for it. Many did not understand the point in arguing now about who started it – we will never know the truth anyway, they said. Kursk residents discussed their own troubles, but not politics. If there was a discussion of who was to blame, it was usually local officials who were fingered. For example, officials in Kursk Region were accused of screwing up the defense of the border – they allegedly embezzled the money meant to build fortifications. Village heads were accused of failing to warn people and abandoning them during the assault. Some even put forward fantastical theories about a “cunning Kremlin plan” in which Russia was letting the Ukrainian army into Russia to distract Kyiv from other areas of the front. But that’s as far as it went. Neither spontaneous patriotism nor mass antiwar revolt occurred in Kursk Region. People did not take to the streets with flags or protests – they were simply trying to survive and help their loved ones.

“The military crisis did not lead to ideological mobilization of the region’s population (or the country’s) in support of the Kremlin. Nor did it result in politicization [in favor of opposing the government],” the researchers conclude. A year after those events, life in Kursk continues – military exercises thunder, sirens wail from time to time and at night the city is plunged into darkness due to power outages. People still do not like to talk about the war with strangers. Refugees still dream of home. “We just want to go back. And then we will see, because we do not even want to plan ahead. We do not want anything,” one woman from the border region who had lost everything told the researchers.