Attacks from Ukraine have killed at least a dozen Russian civilians and displaced thousands. But they have not fundamentally changed the calculus for Vladimir Putin.
Even as new attacks have brought the war into Russia, the Russians have responded with force, raising the threat for the few civilians left in towns along the border.
In Ukraine’s capital, residents struggled with the question of who was to blame for a shelter closed off to two women and a child. In Russia, the authorities described evacuations in a border region.
Some fighters who led an incursion into Russian territory this week have neo-Nazi ties. “I worry that something like this could backfire on Ukraine because these are not ambiguous people.”