Russia says it is battling a cross-border incursion by saboteurs who burst through the frontier from Ukraine, in what appears to be one of the biggest attacks of its kind since the war began last year.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region on Monday said a Ukrainian “sabotage group” had entered Russian territory in the Graivoron district bordering Ukraine, and was being repelled.
But the Ukrainian outlet Hromadske cited Ukrainian military intelligence as saying two armed Russian opposition groups, the Liberty of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), both consisting of Russian citizens, had carried out the attack.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian President Vladimir Putin had been informed and that work was under way to drive out the “saboteurs”, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported.
A senior aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv had nothing to do with the incursion, putting it down to Russia’s emerging “violent resistance movement”.
Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram that the Russian army, border guards, presidential guards and the FSB security service were involved in the operation. He said at least six people had been wounded and three houses and an administrative building damaged.
The Telegram channel Baza, which has links to Russia’s security services, said there were indications of fighting in three settlements along the main road leading into Russia. The “Open Belgorod” Telegram channel said power and water had been cut off to several villages.
Reuters was unable to verify the reports and the Ukrainian military was not immediately available for comment.
A group calling itself the Liberty of Russia Legion — a Ukraine-based Russian militia led by Russian opposition figure Ilya Ponomarev that says it is working inside Russia for Putin’s overthrow — said on Twitter it had “completely liberated” the border town of Kozinka.
It said forward units had reached the district centre of Graivoron, further east.
“Moving on. Russia will be free!” it wrote.
In a written statement to Reuters, senior Zelensky aide Mykhailo Podolyak agreed with Ukrainian military intelligence.
“The Russian liberation movement can become something that will contribute to the correct end of the war in Ukraine and significantly speed up the beginning of transformational events in the Russian political elite,” he said.
“The violent Russian resistance movement, whose architects are exclusively citizens of Russia itself, is gradually coming out of the underground. They are independent in their decisions, have certain experience, and are free from fear.”
Ukrainian social media users made regular reference to what they called the “Belgorod People’s Republic” — a nod to events in eastern Ukraine in 2014 when Russia-backed militias purporting to be rebels against the Kyiv government declared “people’s republics” in the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.
The reported incursion comes two days after Russia said it had captured the final few blocks of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Moscow’s first substantial claim of victory since last summer after the bloodiest land battle in Europe since World War Two.
But even as the Russians have pushed forward inside Bakhmut, their forces on the city’s northern and southern outskirts were retreating last week at the war’s fastest pace for six months, giving both sides reasons to claim momentum.
Moscow says capturing Bakhmut now opens the way to further advances in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine says its advance on the Russian forces’ flanks is more meaningful than its withdrawal inside Bakhmut itself, and Russia will have to weaken its lines elsewhere to send reinforcements to hold the shattered city.
