In a Russian border region scarred by war, civilians want peace with Ukraine — but not compromise

RYLSK, Russia — Air-raid sirens are greeted with a shrug in the small town of Rylsk in Russia’s southwestern Kursk oblast, where residents carry on with their day unconcerned as loud speakers warn, “Attention, missile danger, proceed to shelter.”

Nearby, soldiers stand around smoking cigarettes or jump from vehicles to pick up packages from the Ozon store, a Russian equivalent of Amazon, in the thousand-year-old town.

Today, Rylsk sits just behind the front lines of the war Russia launched with the invasion of Ukraine, abandoned by the students who used to come and study at its four colleges. Its population is now mostly Russian troops, elderly people and those who have left nearby villages that have been occupied or become too dangerous in the eight months since Ukrainian forces crossed their northwestern border in a surprise incursion that Russia has failed to fully push back.

In the now militarized town that is dotted with traditional blue and white churches, the signs of missile and drone damage are clear on some of the buildings. Standing in the rubble of a destroyed elementary school, Mayor Sergei Kurnosov, 39, told NBC News that a concert hall and a teachers college had also been struck in December. NBC News could not independently verify this claim.

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“We hope that peace will come, and we will return to normal peaceful coexistence, normal, peaceful life,” he said, emphasizing that civilians had been killed in the town as a result of the fighting. Here, almost every family has relatives in Ukraine and there are still street signs pointing the way to the town of Glukhov across the border.

“We hope that the leaders will come to an agreement and we will have peace,” added Kurnosov, who carries a drone detector with him at all times.

Asked about the children killed across the border since Russia invaded Ukraine and the targeting of schools there, he called the question “provocative.”

Draconian legislation means that people can be jailed up to 15 years for criticizing the Russian army and the conflict, but others have been influenced by three years of powerful state media messaging priming them for war.

Even some who want peace said they did not want to compromise. There is deep resistance to the idea that President Vladimir Putin is responsible for the war, which rumbled into its third year last month.

While people were keen to return to a normal life, Kurnosov said, this could only be achieved if Ukrainian forces left the region. “We must liberate our territory,” he said. “This is clear.”

Elsewhere, Leonid Meshkov, a 39-year-old construction worker, said the war “began with” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. To end the war “everything rests on Zelensky, and not on Putin,” he said.

While his administration has reached out to the Kremlin in recent weeks and cut off military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, President Donald Trump said Friday that he was “strongly considering” sanctions and tariffs on Russia in hopes of forcing a settlement to end the war. In a post on Truth Social he said they could remain in place “until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED.”

While Ukrainian forces remain in Kursk, “it’s a very serious barrier for any talks,” Andrei Fedorov, Russia’s former deputy foreign minister, told NBC News in an interview Tuesday. Without elaborating, he added that “there is a kind of order to take Kursk back by the end of March, so maybe the problem will disappear.”

While this would mean more fighting and go against Trump’s ambition to end the conflict quickly — on the campaign trail he vowed to end the war within 24 hours of taking office — Fedorov said he believed the Kremlin was hoping to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin. But he said it is demanding to know more about the White House’s ultimate goals before the Russian leader could commit.

“Meeting with Trump without results is not suitable for Putin,” Federov said, adding that the Russian leader needed results and “a visible victory.”

Talks between the two leaders were broached at high-level talks attended by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other officials in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, last month. But while the United States and Russia agreed to re-establish “the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and Moscow,” there has been little movement since then.

And according to Fedorov, who remains a Putin ally, the American delegation arrived without concrete proposals. Meeting Trump was like going “to the desert,” he added.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview Tuesday that her country was “not in a hurry but we are ready” for talks. “It depends on both sides and the speed of both sides,” she added.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Thursday that he would travel to Saudi Arabia on Monday to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and that his team would stay on to hold talks with U.S. officials.

Zelenskyy has been on the back foot following the disastrous Oval Office meeting last week with Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The White House subsequently cut off Ukraine’s American intelligence feed that has helped it to anticipate Russian attacks and troop movements, and avoid nightly barrages from Russian drones on its cities and infrastructure.

For Russia, an ultimate goal will be securing sanctions relief from the Trump administration. But Trump won’t be able to do that unilaterally, said Maximilian Hess, author of “Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict Between Russia and the West.”

But while the White House has made no secret that it is interested in economic opportunities with Russia, he said the “most important” sanctions “are shielded by legislation.”

“That means those Russian individuals and entities blacklisted under certain executive orders cannot be lifted without congressional review,” Hess added.

With Republicans currently in control of both the House and the Senate “a simple majority vote is all that would be needed to lift these sanctions,” he said, adding the only obstacle would be whether the party’s lawmakers were prepared to “buck Trump on this issue.”

In Russia, people had been incentivized to fight, according to Fedorov, the former deputy foreign minister, who pointed to the fact that people receive around 2 million rubles, or around $20,000 when they sign up for the army, and then around 200,000 rubles around $2,250 a month. The average Russian salary is around $830 a month.

So, people in the army understand “they will lose all this money” if the war stops, he said, adding that the other problem would be “what to do with the military-industrial complex, which is now working 24/7.”

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based defense think tank, estimates that around 80,000 troops, including some from North Korea, are ranged against Ukraine in Kursk.

Ahead of Putin’s invasion in February 2022, the region was a critical rally point for the massive buildup of forces along the border; columns of tanks from a major military base in the area were among the first to pour into Ukraine’s neighboring Kharkiv region.

Today, camouflaged encampments, troop carriers and military checkpoints are ever present.  Anti-tank defenses line the highway and plastered across a building in Rylsk is a quote from Putin. “Being strong is a guarantee of national security for Russia,” it reads.

Standing outside a store selling military uniforms, Margarita Akhapkina, 35, said “everyone” wants the war to be over. The mother of four, who said her husband has been serving in Putin’s forces for three years, added that war had become “normal.”

Many, including Stanislav Boikin, a 16-year-old high school student, are hopeful that Trump can help to secure a peace deal.

Speaking in English, the teenager said the American president was “a wonderful person.”

Keir Simmons and Natasha Lebedeva reported from Rylsk, and Matthew Bodner from London.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com