As tens of thousands flee their homes in border region, many say government downplayed threat of invasion
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Lyubov Antipova last spoke to her elderly parents almost two weeks ago, when she first heard rumours of a Ukrainian incursion, and begged them to leave their village in Russia’s Kursk region.
The threat seemed unreal – Russian soil had not seen invading forces since the end of the second world war – and Russian state media initially dismissed the invasion as a one-off “attempt at infiltration”, so Antipova’s parents, who keep chickens and a pig on a small plot, decided to stay in Zaoleshenka.