Russian city evacuates 400 children

At a train station in Russia’s border city of Belgorod, worried mother Yelena Gokova is seeing off her 10-year-old who is being evacuated after weeks of deadly shelling from Ukrainian forces.

The 37-year-old is one of hundreds of parents escorting their children to the station, agreeing to an offer by authorities to send them to children’s camps further from the border for safety.

It is one of the biggest civilian evacuations on Russian soil since Moscow launched its Ukraine offensive in February last year.

“We are worried for the children,” Gokova, dressed in purple winter wear and looking anxious, told Agence France-Presse.

Ukraine, whose own cities have come under attack, has targeted Belgorod for months but has sharply escalated the shelling in the last two weeks.

Gokova made the decision to send her son away after a 30 December Ukrainian attack that killed 25 people.

“We decided to worry less about them and send them to the (children’s) camp,” she said in the bustling station.

He will go to a camp in the Kaluga region near Moscow.

“The children are scared of bangs,” Gokova said. “It is very worrying.”

Belgorod Mayor Valentin said 392 children “will go to out-of-town health camps in the Voronezh and Kaluga region for 21 days.”

Gokova said her son’s school organized the evacuation with the authorities, but that most children did not want to be separated from their parents.

The evacuations came a day after the Kremlin said it would do “everything” it could to stop the shelling, which officials say has left over two dozen people dead in Belgorod.

But moving people out of their homes on Russian territory is a blow to the Kremlin, which has tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy in Russia ahead of President Vladimir Putin’s re-election campaign.

Kharkiv strike

Meanwhile, two Russian missiles struck a hotel in Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, injuring 13 people including foreign journalists, local authorities said Thursday.

Oleg Synegubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said S-300 missiles were fired Wednesday evening from the Russian frontier region of Belgorod.