FOR MOST people in Belgorod, once a quiet and comfortable Russian city 40km from the Ukrainian border, the war started on December 30th 2023, almost two years after it began in Ukraine. That day the centre of Belgorod was hit by a Ukrainian rocket, killing 25 civilians, including two children, and wounding more than a hundred. Since then the city and the province that surrounds it have been attacked almost daily. Some 200 civilians have died and 800 have been wounded—small numbers compared with what Ukraine has endured, but far more than anywhere else in Russia.