Due to the operation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region, local Russians are fleeing their homes. In Russia they call this voluntary evacuation. Residents of the Kursk region allegedly voluntarily leave their homes and property, voluntarily, in a hurry, grab their children with them and voluntarily evacuate. Russian official sources resort to such rhetoric when depicting the situation in the Kursk region. In fact, more than 120 thousand Russians have already evacuated.

Some pro-Russian public pages even sneer at the term “voluntary evacuation”, saying that this is “something like mass entertainment, a new type of active tourism”. They also add that the Russians “listened to the victories of the Russian army and voluntarily evacuated”.

The evacuation itself in the Kursk region is difficult, as evidenced, in particular, by the video appeal of the local residents to Putin with an appeal to help them, since the local authorities are doing nothing. For example, one of these videos was recorded by residents of the village of Huievo, Sudzhanskyi district, Kursk region, complaining that they did not evacuate.

Also, instead of the term “voluntary evacuation”, Russian officials may use the word “displacement”. Thus, on August 12, 2024, the governor of the Belgorod region, Viacheslav Hladkov, announced the activity of Ukrainian troops on the border of the Krasnoyaruzh region and announced the beginning of the evacuation of residents from there. “We are having an alarming morning (...) In order to protect the life and health of our population, we are starting to move people living in the Krasnoyaruzh district to safer places”, Hladkov said in his address on the telegram channel.

Concepts such as “voluntary evacuation” or “relocation” help official structures in Russia curb the panic among its ordinary citizens caused by military operations in the Kursk region. And also to downplay the scale of what is happening, thereby disfiguring Russians’ perception of reality. Accordingly, everyone inside the country should think that the situation is under control and “everything is going according to plan”. However, in fact, the reality is different as the war has come to Russian territory, and the Russian authorities are trying in every possible way to deny this, which is why they resort to such absurd terms.