2023-05-24 15:23:03
Moscow claims to have repelled the attack on Russian soil by militias aligned with Ukraine, which, however, deny that claim and ensure that their mission continues.
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On Tuesday night, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region announced he was ending the “anti-terrorism regime” of restrictions amounting to martial law. He also said that the Defense Ministry and Russian security agencies remain involved in a “clean-up” campaign.
Before his announcement, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have “trapped and killed” units of anti-Kremlin Russian fighters whose stated goal is to rid the country of Vladimir Putin.
The Russian Defense Ministry released several videos that it described as artillery attacks and shelling against members of two militias: the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Russian Freedom Legion.
Those videos could not be independently verified. One of them shows an airstrike on a building that looks like the Grayvoron border post, the same one that appeared in an earlier militia video with a Russian border guard lying in a pool of blood.
Members of those units have rejected the claims of the Kremlin, which claims to have killed dozens of their members. In a video published by the Russian Volunteer Corps, a group of fighters are seen on an armored vehicle in what they call a “small, but already [liberada] part of our country.” In another recording they appear firing mortar shells from a place that they say is inside Russia.
The fighting began on Monday. In Russia, videos of helicopters dropping flares over a city were published, and in Ukraine the media broadcast drone footage of a smoky town after a bombing. A scene that is repeated in the Ukrainian cities and towns attacked by Russia, but that until now is rare on the Russian side of the border.
The cross border raid It has been seen by some as a possible preliminary operation to divert Russia’s attention on the battlefield before the much-discussed Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Kiev has denied any connection to the attacks, but what is certain is that these units are based on Ukrainian soil and appear to be equipped with US-made military vehicles, including Humvees and what appear to be International Maxxpro 1224 armored vehicles. In 2022, the United States had announced that it would deliver several hundred of these vehicles to the Ukrainian army.
In Washington, the authorities question whether the weapons used were supplied by the United States. “I will say that at this point we are skeptical as to the veracity of these reports,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. “As a more general principle, as we have already said and I think I said yesterday, we do not encourage or allow attacks inside Russia, and we have made that clear; but as we have also said, it is Ukraine that must decide how it conducts this war.”
Members of anti-Kremlin units, including anti-Putin fighters linked to Russia’s extreme right, appear in the videos saying the border is “open in the canal” and that they have hijacked a Russian armored troop transport.
According to conservative estimates, the number of militants amounts to 80. According to Russian bloggers specializing in military affairs and close to the Russian Defense Ministry, the number could reach 500.
According to Ukrainian military intelligence, these anti-Kremlin Russians could act as a “defensive corridor” and help prevent cross-border bombing attacks on Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities have directly compared to the “little green men”or unmarked soldiers, that Russia employed in the annexation of Crimea and in the early stages of the war in Donbas.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that the attack has raised “deep concern” and that it means Russia will have to continue its war in Ukraine. Putin said Russia is living in “difficult times” during an award ceremony in Moscow and called for “national strengthening” around the war effort.
“In the border regions, Russia faces an escalating security threat, with the loss of warplanes, attacks on railway lines with improvised explosives and now rebel actions,” a report from Britain’s intelligence services said on Tuesday. . “Russia will almost certainly use these incidents to support the official narrative that it is a casualty in this war,” the document added.
“Seriously, it is time for the Russian regime to think about objective reality: the sooner it leaves all the territories of Ukraine, the less catastrophe Russia will end up suffering,” said Ukrainian government adviser Mykhailo Podolyak.
New details about the raid and the number of victims continued to emerge on Tuesday night. The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that the Russian base Belgorod-22 had been bombed, killing two Russian soldiers, an attack that had not been published until then. The base has been used on other occasions as a warehouse for nuclear warheads.
The Russian Defense Ministry has blamed the Ukrainian armed forces. He announced that more than 70 “Ukrainian fighters had been killed and that four armored vehicles and five pickup trucks had been destroyed.” Viacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the Belgorod region, stated that “Ukrainian armed forces” had killed a civilian.
Late on Monday the drones also attacked Belgorod’s administrative buildings that are used by the Interior Ministry and the Russian spy service FSB, along with a customs checkpoint. The Deputy Chief of the Grayvoron Border District was injured during a shelling raid.
Governor Gladkov said Tuesday night that Belgorod had been the target of a new attack in which a drone-dropped explosive device damaged a car. He later announced that a second drone had been shot down.
Following the outbreak of fighting on Monday, hundreds of Belgorodians were evacuated from their homes and relocated to temporary accommodation. On Tuesday, amid the incessant fighting, the governor asked the population not to return to their homes.
Translation by Francisco de Zárate
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