On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused a Ukrainian sabotage group of entering Russia’s southern Bryansk region bordering Ukraine and opening fire on civilians in a “terrorist act.” According to BBC, speaking on Russian state TV Putin said “today they committed another terrorist act, another crime, penetrated the border area and opened fire on civilians”.
“They saw that it was a civilian car, that civilians and children were sitting there, and opened fire. It is exactly such people who set themselves the task of depriving us of historical memory. They will achieve nothing, we will put the squeeze on them,” he added.
“Saboteurs from Ukraine,” killed two men and wounded a 10-year-old boy in the attack, the governor of Bryansk said.
Kyiv has vehemently denied the accusation.
Mykhaylo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a tweet said it was a “classsic deliberate provocation.”
The story about 🇺🇦sabotage group in RF is a classic deliberate provocation. RF wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country & the growing poverty after the year of war. The partisan movement in RF is getting stronger & more aggressive. Fear your partisans…
— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) March 2, 2023
However, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said FSB forces clashed with the saboteurs who crossed into Russia and took hostages.
It alleged that the “nationalists” were then hit by a Russian artillery strike and pushed back to Ukraine, but left a large cache of explosives in the village.
Putin branded the Zelensky-led government as “nationalists” and “neo-Nazis,” after Moscow’s special military operation began in Kyiv.
This is not the first time that Russia has accused Kyiv of such attacks. Previously it reported some Ukrainian missile and drone strikes on Russian borders. But there have been no confirmed reports on Ukrainian forces infiltrating Russia.
(with inputs from agencies)
