The assault has been claimed by the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), a unit of the Territorial Defense of Ukraine
March 2 () –
Ukrainian authorities have branded Russia’s allegations of an attack by “Ukrainian saboteurs” in Russia’s Briansk region, located near the common border, as “deliberate provocation”, an incident that has resulted in at least one death and several kidnapped.
The main adviser to the Ukrainian Presidency, Mikhailo Podoliak, has indicated in his account on the social network Twitter that “Russia wants to scare its people to justify the attack against another country and the growing poverty after a year of war.” “The partisan movement in Russia is getting stronger and more aggressive. Fear your partisans,” he said.
Likewise, the representative of the Ukrainian Intelligence services within the Ministry of Defense, Andriy Yusov, has stated that the event is part of “the continuation of the transformation of Russia, its purification and the liberation from the dictatorship of (the president Russian, Vladimir) Putin”, according to the Hromadske news portal.
“Today, Russia is an entity in which there are a large number of conflicts between nations, ethnic groups, religions and sociopolitical groups,” he said, while pointing out that the group that has claimed responsibility is made up of ” people who, with weapons in their hands, fight against the Putin regime and those who support it”. “Perhaps the Russians are beginning to wake up and take concrete measures,” she assessed.
Authorship has been claimed by the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), a unit of the Territorial Defense of Ukraine created in August 2022 and made up of far-right Russians who previously fought within the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion group and other Ukrainian units in the Donbas region (east) since 2014, as reported by the Ukrainian UNIAN news agency. The group uses symbols of the Russian Liberation Army — known as the Vlasov Army — which collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.
Putin has described what happened as “a terrorist act” and “a crime” and has denounced that the assailants crossed the border from Ukraine and “opened fire on civilians.” “They saw that it was a civilian car. They saw that there were civilians and children,” he lamented, referring to an attack in the town of Klimovski that has resulted in at least one death.
“These are the people who have made it their task to deprive us of our historical memory, deprive us of our history, deprive us of our traditions and our language,” he said. “It is neo-Nazis like the ones I just mentioned and their owners who are responsible for this violence,” Russian news agency Interfax reported.
“I repeat it again. They will not succeed. We will crush them,” warned the Russian president, shortly after the Kremlin spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, reported that there are “measures” underway by the Russian security forces to ” destroy” the assailants.
On the other hand, the governor of the Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, has affirmed that a woman has died and another has been injured due to an attack by the Ukrainian Army against the town of Tiotkino. “According to preliminary information, three houses have suffered shrapnel damage,” he said on his Telegram account, before adding that the attack has caused a cut in electricity service in the city.
Briansk, Kursk and other Russian regions located on the border have been the scene of attacks attributed to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, mainly with drones, in the framework of the invasion of Ukraine, unleashed on February 24, 2022 by order of Putin.
