Rylsk, Russia-The air writing sirens are received with a shoulder shrink in the small town of Rylsk in the southwest of Kursk Oblast of Russia, where residents continue their day without worrying how strong speakers warn: “Attention, missile danger, proceed to take refuge.”
Near, the soldiers stop smoking cigarettes or jump from vehicles to collect packages from the Ozon store, a Russian equivalent of Amazon, in the city of a thousand years.
Today, Rylsk is just behind the first line of the Russia war launched with the invasion of Ukraine, abandoned by students who used to come and study in their four universities. Its population is now mostly Russian troops, older people and those who have left the nearby villages that have been occupied or have become too dangerous in the eight months since the Ukrainian forces crossed their northwest border in a surprise incursion that Russia has not completely retreated.
In the city now militarized that is splashed with blue and white traditional churches, the signs of damage to missiles and drones are clear in some of the buildings. Standing in the debris of a destroyed primary school, Mayor Sergei Kurnosov, 39, told NBC News that a concert hall and a university of teachers had also been beaten in December. NBC News could not independently verify this claim.
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“We hope that peace arrives, and we will return to normal peaceful coexistence, a normal and peaceful life,” he said, emphasizing that civilians had been killed in the city as a result of the fight. Here, almost all relatives have relatives in Ukraine and there are still signs in the street that point to the city of Gukhov on the other side of the border.
“We hope that leaders will reach an agreement and have peace,” added Kurnosov, who has a drone detector with him at all times.
When asked about the children killed across the border since Russia invaded Ukraine and the objective of schools there, he described the “provocative” question.
Draconian legislation means that people can be imprisoned up to 15 years to criticize the Russian army and the conflict, but others have been influenced for three years of powerful messages from state media that prepare them for war.
Even some who want peace said they didn’t want to commit. There is a deep resistance to the idea that President Vladimir Putin is responsible for the war, which rumbled in his third year last month.
While people were eager to return to a normal life, Kurnosov said, this could only be achieved if Ukrainian forces left the region. “We must release our territory,” he said. “This is clear.”
In other places, Leonid Meshkov, a 39 -year -old construction worker, said the war “began with” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. To end the war “everything rests on Zelensky, and not on Putin,” he said.
While his administration has communicated with the Kremlin in recent weeks and cut military aid and the exchange of intelligence with Ukraine, President Donald Trump said Friday that he was “considering” sanctions and tariffs on Russia in the hope of forcing an agreement to end the war. In a publication on social truth, he said they could remain in place “until a high resolution agreement and a final agreement on peace are reached.”
While the Ukrainian forces remain in Kursk, “it is a very serious barrier for any talk,” said Andrei Fedorov, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, A NBC News in an interview on Tuesday. No elaborate, He added that “there is a kind of order to take Kursk at the end of March, so maybe the problem will disappear.”
While this would mean more fighting and would go against Trump’s ambition to end the conflict quickly, in the campaign he promised to put an end to war within 24 hours after assuming the position, Fedorov said he believed that Kremlin hoped to establish a meeting between Trump and Putin. But he said he demands more about the final objectives of the White House before the Russian leader could commit.
“Meeting with Trump without results is not suitable for Putin,” Federov said, adding that the Russian leader needed results and “a visible victory.”
The conversations between the two leaders were addressed in high -level conversations attended by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other officials in the capital of Saudi Arabia, Riad, last month. But while the United States and Russia agreed Restore “the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and Moscow”, there has been little movement since then.
