Border villages under fire: 5 June 2023 in Belgorod and Dnipro Raion
A look back at a day when shelling trapped civilians on the Russian side of the border and a missile strike in Dnipro Raion had left a child dead.
What did the war look like along the border and in Ukraine's regions on 5 June 2023? Two reports, one from each side of the frontier, showed civilians at risk far from the front line.
In Russia's Belgorod region, the Russian Volunteer Corps claimed on 5 June 2023 to have captured the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka. The region's governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said about 100 civilians remained trapped there. He said they could not be evacuated because shelling continued.
The village lay in an area affected by the cross-border raid that began on 22 May 2023. Armed groups from Ukraine entered Belgorod Oblast that day. Two Russian rebel groups allied with and based in Ukraine, the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps, claimed to have taken control of several border settlements and clashed with Russian government forces. The Polish Volunteer Corps also took part. Russian authorities described the attacks as the work of a Ukrainian "sabotage group" and imposed counter-terrorism measures in the region. The raid was later described as the largest cross-border attack since the full-scale invasion began on 24 February 2022.
Dnipro Raion, two days earlier
On 3 June 2023, Russian forces struck a residential area in Dnipro Raion with Iskander cruise missiles. A two-year-old girl was killed. Twenty-two other civilians were injured, five of them children.
The two events were different in kind and place, but both left ordinary residents exposed to shelling and missile fire in regions far from the capital.
