Drone strikes and border trenches: Russia’s war on Ukraine comes home

Recently built defences give us a roadmap of Russian anxiety, write Janice Kai Chen and Mary Ilyushina

‘Over time, the reach of strikes has grown longer and longer, approaching Moscow’ (Maxar Technologies/Getty/The Independent)

Three drones buzzed through the night sky over Belgorod, a Russian city just a couple of dozen miles from the Ukrainian border. One drone smashed through the window of a sixth-floor apartment, startling a couple who were watching television. The other two crashed on nearby streets, denting parked cars and rattling the residents’ nerves.

Ten days after that event in late February, workers at an oil-pumping station in Novozybkov, a small town in Russia's Bryansk region, found a small bomb that officials said was probably dropped from a drone. Later that day, in Rostov-on-Don, a building of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, exploded in flames – the latest in a string of mysterious fires across western Russia.

More than a year after President Vladimir Putin unleashed his invasion, Russia’s war in Ukraine is also being fought on Russian soil, and Moscow is scrambling to protect its borders. The war Putin expected to win quickly now encroaches daily on the lives of Russian citizens, with frequent reports of fires, drone attacks and shelling.