Without panic, Anastasia and her dogs, two little white bichons, headed into one of the concrete shelters -- resembling a shipping container -- that have been installed on the city's sidewalks.

"So, you've come to visit our Belgorod? Do you like it?" she asked.

Since the Kremlin launched its full-scale offensive on Ukraine in February 2022, Belgorod has been one of the places inside Russia that has suffered the most.

Around 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the border with Ukraine, the city of some 320,000 has come under increasingly frequent retaliatory rocket and drone fire from Kyiv's army.

Ukraine calls the attacks fair retribution for Moscow's own nightly barrages -- which often see hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles fired -- and insists it targets military and energy sites.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed and thousands wounded in the Belgorod region since the start of the war, according to official statements by Russian officials.

Several times a day, residents get text messages alerting them of a potential incoming strike, and sirens screech across the city.

Giant anti-drone nets have been draped over buildings and concrete shelters line the pavements.

From inside the shelter, the blare of the loudspeakers was heard once more: "Alert over!"

Anastasia and her bichons headed back out.

This time, no sign of any attack. But the boom of Russian air defence systems tearing through the sky to intercept an incoming drone or missile has become a familiar backdrop to life in the city.

The speaker system switched to a jazz number by Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson and teenagers practised tricks on their skateboards.

- 1,000 callouts a day -

Russia's army has captured land inside Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, which borders Belgorod, as it seeks to establish what it calls a "buffer zone".

Moscow argues it would provide protection against border strikes and the kind of shock incursion Ukraine launched into the neighbouring Kursk region in 2024.

Around Belgorod, it is hard to miss the sights of damage caused by the Ukrainian counter-strikes.

Electricity installations have been blown out, craters punched in the ground.

Water, electricity and telecommunications outages are becoming part of everyday life.

On Wednesday, power was cut for several hours. Ukrainian drone attacks throughout the region left three people dead, including an 18-year-old, according to authorities.

Across the border in Ukraine, Russian strikes on power plants left millions of people without heating or power for days in temperatures of -20C throughout the winter.

Belgorod resident Tatiana Polianskaya, a 52-year-old cook, said the last time her power went out -- in early March -- "it was restored relatively quickly", after a few hours.

She said her cousin, a farm worker, was killed earlier in the conflict when a Ukrainian drone hit him while he was ploughing a field near the border.

Among other tools, Russia's counter-measures have included mass internet blackouts -- something regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has questioned, raising concerns that they stop citizens from receiving the air raid alerts.

Belgorod's emergency services spend much of their time responding to reports of debris from downed drones.

"Under normal circumstances, we have about 100 call-outs" a day, Nikolai Lebedev, the head of the city's emergency response unit, told AFP.

But if there is a particularly intense attack, it can reach 1,000, "because the air defence system is operating, things are being shot down, and these fragments fall."

Those defences are not always effective.

In December 2023, a Ukrainian attack killed 25 people in the city, Russian officials said -- the largest toll from a single attack on Russian territory since the start of the war.

- 'Duped' -

Belgorod used to have extremely close ties with Ukraine before Moscow launched its military offensive.

Everybody AFP spoke to in the city had some connection to Ukraine -- often to Kharkiv, around 40 kilometres on the other side of the border and which Russia has extensively targeted with drones and missiles.

Galina spent years working in Ukraine and her daughter still lives there.

They have not seen each other for five years.

"But my daughter and I talk three times a day... well, now it's already hard," she told AFP.

Asked about Russia's own bombardments that have killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians over the last four years, Galina said she feels "sorry for ordinary people".

But, she quickly added, Ukrainian authorities have primed their citizens "to hate all Russians".

It is just one part of the narrative pushed out by the Kremlin to justify its offensive -- talking points widely rejected by Kyiv.

"They've been duped," Galina said.