LONDON: President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Russia was fighting off a “terrorist attack” in the southern Bryansk region bordering Ukraine, and vowed to crush what he said was a Ukrainian sabotage group that had fired at civilians.
Ukraine accused Russia of staging a false “provocation”, but also appeared to imply some form of attack had indeed been carried out by Russian anti-government partisans.
Amid reports of shelling and sporadic sabotage, Russia’s border regions have become increasingly volatile since Moscow invaded Ukraine a year ago in what it called a “special military operation”.
Putin, in a televised address, accused the group of opening fire at civilians, including children. Bryansk Governor Alexander Bogomaz had earlier said that the Ukrainians had shot and killed one person and injured a child.
“They won’t achieve anything. We will crush them,” said Putin, adding the group was made up of the kind of people who wanted to rob Russia of its history and language.
In two videos circulating online, armed men calling themselves the “Russian Volunteer Corps” said they had crossed the border to fight what they called “the bloody Putinite and Kremlin regime”.
Calling themselves Russian “liberators”, the armed men called on Russians to take up arms and rise up against the authorities. They said they did not open fire at civilians.
The authenticity of videos wasn’t reportedly verified.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that law enforcement agencies would determine who was responsible and Putin was being briefed by security chiefs on the situation.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter: “The story about a Ukrainian sabotage group in RF (Russian Federation) is a classic deliberate provocation.” He said Russia “wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country & the growing poverty after the year of war”.