In the Russian city of Kursk, several dozen miles from the heart of the fighting, Ukraine’s surprise thrust into Russia is not visible even as smoke on the horizon. But the scars of its impact are impossible to miss.

More than 130,000 people, according to the Russian authorities, have fled border areas or been evacuated from them since Ukrainian forces began their incursion on Aug. 6. Many have found themselves in this regional capital, a city of about a half-million.

During a recent visit, people awaited in long lines for help with accommodation and other basic necessities like blankets. They jostled for position and sometimes shoved, but they did not move when sirens wailed repeatedly, warning of a potential drone or missile attack.

Many walls bore posters seeking word of loved ones who lived in the path of the Ukrainian incursion. Some had been placed by Lyubov Prilutskaya, 36, a Kursk resident who has lost contact with her parents in Sudzha, a town six miles from the border that Ukraine now says it fully controls.

“They didn’t want to leave,” she said. “And then it was too late.”

Others had escaped, Ms. Prilutskaya said, because they “left the territory themselves,” before any official warning or help with evacuation. She learned of the danger looming for her parents only when one of their neighbors called, asking whether she knew of a place to stay in Kursk.

“Why didn’t the top react?” she asked. “Why didn’t they tell people?”

Many of those who fled the border areas spoke of shock and confusion.

Alesya Torba, 41, from Kasachya Loknya, a village near Sudzha, said that on Aug. 5, “Such shelling began that it was no longer possible to stay.”

Her 18-year-old daughter, Albina, had given birth the day before, she said — to a girl, Sonya — after being taken to Kursk in an ambulance. Ms. Torba herself left the day the incursion began; she saw fires and wrecked cars on the road out.

Her grandmother, uncle and aunt were still in the village, and out of contact, along with her dogs, cats and chickens.

“Probably there will be nothing to return to,” she said.

Lyudmila Brakhmova, 66, was evacuated from Sudzha by the army on Aug. 7, along with her son, Nikolai, 43, a disabled veteran of the second Chechen war. “It’s simply unbearable,” she said, adding of the destruction Ukrainian forces had wrought in the town, “I don’t understand why there’s so much hatred.”

“I have no hatred for any nation and everyone is equal,” she said. “We all want to live.”

Individuals and organizations in Kursk have scrambled to help with the panicked influx.

Natalia Chulikova, the director of House of Good Deeds, a local charitable group, said 15,000 families had passed through its doors. “We need food, we really need it,” she said. “And everyone asks for pillows,” she added. “They fled from home without anything.”

Ivan Kruitikovo, who said he had served for four months with a Russian private military force near Kherson in southern Ukraine, has turned his boxing club in Kursk into a temporary shelter.

He has been expecting something like this attack for more than a year, he said, adding: “A lot of people still do not understand the overall seriousness of what is happening.”

“Many people ignore the situation around them and think it will pass them by,” he said. “But we are already experiencing it first hand.”

With all the cars that have come in from the border areas, the traffic is denser in Kursk now, and there seemed to be anger in the air.

Some was directed toward the Defense Ministry and the local authorities, who were accused of failing to prevent the incursion or to respond to it more quickly. “Groups of people are fighting for power and this greatly interferes with work,” Ms. Prilutskaya said.

Some was directed toward the state-controlled media, which has acknowledged the border fighting but shown relatively little of what has happened. “What do we read and what do they show on TV?” Ms. Torba said. “There are no similarities at all.”

And much was directed toward the Ukrainians. “There should be no peace negotiations,” said a woman from Ryisky District, about two miles from the border, who for fear of reprisals would give only her first name, Tatyana. “Now we must go to Kyiv,” she added of Russian forces.

“Imagine how many people there will be who lost everything,” said Mr. Kruitikovo, the former soldier, thinking over the prospects for the war. “And the enemy also needs to be respected — how many left without a father, without a brother? It will be very difficult to wash away this hate.”

As for himself, he said, because of the incursion he would probably sign another military contract.