Tanks were used by armed rebels posing as Russian citizens to launch cross-border incursions into western Russia on Tuesday, but Moscow declared that it had repulsed the assaults.
According to Ukraine, the organizations were operating on their own. However, it was widely believed that Kyiv was behind the border assaults, which took place little over two years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and days before a Russian presidential election.
“This operation is just getting started today.” However, as far as we are aware, the elections aren’t till the end of the week. The most fascinating things are still to come, according to Freedom of Russia Legion spokesman Alexei Baranovsky.
The organization claimed total control over Tyotkino, a village near Russia’s Kursk region that borders Ukraine. They also released footage of multiple soldiers sprinting across a field that appeared to have been recorded by a drone.
Speaking to Reuters over a Zoom call from an undisclosed location, Baranovsky stated that the Kursk region was home to the majority of the personnel employed in the operation.
According to him, the operation might compel Russia to deploy its reservists to protect the region, thereby relieving the Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine of Russian offensive pressure.
“We are diverting the Russian army’s attention and reserves.” They have no choice but to shift reserves, and this is another way that we are defending Ukraine,” he declared.
The group claimed to have destroyed a Russian armored personnel carrier and to have carried out the border incursions with the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Siberian Battalion, two other Ukrainian-based militias.
The local governor was quoted by Russia’s TASS news agency as claiming that one person had been injured in Tyotkino as a result of Ukrainian bombardment.
The assailants were forced to retire after being pushed back, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
According to the report, at around three in the morning Moscow time (0000 GMT), Ukrainian “terrorist formations,” supported by tanks and armored combat vehicles, attempted to invade in three different ways in Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine and the Kursk region.
It said that about five hours later, four further attacks in the Kursk region by Ukrainian “sabotage and reconnaissance groups” were thwarted.
In the afternoon, Ukrainian drones also attacked the Belgorod and Kursk districts. According to the regional governor, two persons were injured when a drone crashed into the Belgorod municipal administrative building.
BUDDING ELECTION
Reuters was unable to independently confirm the claims made by either side on the battlefield.
Although the groups were operating independently of Ukraine, according to a spokesman for the country’s military intelligence service, Kyiv has never explained how these groups obtained cutting-edge weaponry and armored cars.
Other cross-border raids have been attributed to the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom of Russia Legion.
The organizations were portrayed by Russian officials as puppets of the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Ukrainian military.
In social media posts, two of the units made references to this weekend’s Russian presidential election.
The Siberian Battalion uploaded a video that it claimed featured an address from its combatants in Russia to the people of Russia. A man in a military uniform wearing a mask was seen in the video urging Russians to fight instead of voting.
“Guys, don’t vote with ballots, vote with calibers (of guns),” he stated.
“Voters will support candidates they choose, not those they are forced to support. The legion stated on Telegram that Russians will live in freedom.
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Max Hunder in Kiev and Yuliia Dysa in Gdansk handled the reporting; Raju Gopalakrishnan, Tom Balmforth, and Timothy Heritage handled the editing.
