Anti-Kremlin militants claimed to have successfully crossed into Russia on Tuesday and seized control of a village, while Moscow said it had successfully fought off the attempted incursions.
Ukraine insisted that the armed groups were made up of Russian citizens, with Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukrainian military intelligence, claiming the fighters were attempting to “free their country from the Russian Putin dictatorship,” the Kyiv Independent reports. Russia’s Defense Ministry flatly accused the groups of being “Ukrainian militants” who tried to enter Russian territory in the Belgorod and Kursk regions “with the support of tanks and armored combat vehicles.”
The Freedom of Russia Legion, one of the organizations involved in the attack, claimed on Telegram to have taken control of the village of Tyotkino in Russia’s Kursk region on the Ukrainian border. It also released a video that it said showed Russian troops fleeing the village and abandoning heavy equipment.
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The organization also claimed to have destroyed a Russian armored personnel carrier and said its operation—which took place just days before Russia’s presidential election—had been conducted alongside two separate Ukraine-based groups, the Siberian Battalion and the Russian Volunteer Corps.
“This is only the first day [of the operation]. But the elections, as we know, are only at the end of the week… All the most interesting things are yet to come,” Alexei Branovsky, a spokesperson for the Freedom of Russian Legion, told Reuters.
According to Moscow’s Defense Ministry, the attack started at around 3 a.m. local time. Three locations were simultaneously targeted in Belgorod, officials said, which were thwarted by the Russian military before any “violations of the state border” could occur. About five hours later, “four attacks by Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups that tried to break into the border territory near the village of Tyotkino, Kursk region were repulsed,” the ministry added, according to state media. “Having suffered significant losses, the enemy was driven back.”
The ministry later released videos that it said showed “destroyed equipment of sabotage and reconnaissance groups” belonging to the “Ukrainian terrorists.” It said a “US-made” M113 armored personnel carrier and Bradley Fighting Vehicles were among the wrecks.
Separately on Tuesday, the ministry claimed it had intercepted 25 Ukrainian drones. Regional officials said that at least two oil facilities were hit by drones, including a refinery in the Nizhny Novgorod region about 480 miles from the Ukrainian border. Local governor Gleb Nikitin said no one was injured in the attack but that a fire had broken out which was later extinguished.
Another oil depot in Oryol, about 95 miles from Ukraine, was hit by a drone, according to the Associated Press, and Moscow’s mayor reported that an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had been shot down near one of the city’s international airports.
In yet another blow to Russia on Tuesday, the Defense Ministry announced that a military cargo plane with 15 people on board crashed after one of its engines caught fire. The Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft burst into flames shortly after takeoff and crashed in the Ivanovo region northeast of Moscow, according to state media. The military did not specify if there were any casualties among the eight crew and seven passengers on board, but a source told the TASS news agency that all had been killed in the crash.
It’s not clear what caused the fire. It comes weeks after Russian officials said another Il-76 crashed in the Belgorod region while carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war.
