Kyiv-backed troops capture Russians in cross-border foray

A fresh incursion by Ukraine-backed troops has added to signs of vulnerability in Russia’s defences.

Rescuers work on the rubble of a residential building hit by a missile strike on the outskirts of Dnipro, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Picture: AFP

A fresh incursion into Russia’s ­Belgorod region by Ukraine-backed troops who said they seized territory and captured two Russian soldiers added to signs of vulnerability in Russia’s defences on its own territory ahead of an expected offensive by Ukraine aimed at taking back land occupied by Moscow.

Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said there was fighting against enemy troops in the border village of Novaya Tavolzhanka, where authorities had sought to evacuate residents after heavy shelling by Ukrainian forces.

“Battles are ongoing right now,” Mr Gladkov said overnight on Sunday. “I hope they are all ­destroyed.”

Two groups composed mainly of Russian nationalists, opposed to the Kremlin and backed by Kyiv, are posing a growing threat to Russian border regions and pressuring Moscow to draw troops away from frontline areas inside Ukraine, where Russian forces are bracing for attempts by Ukraine to break through their heavily fortified positions.

Sunday’s incursion is the latest, and likely the largest, foray into Russia by the anti-Kremlin fighters supported by Ukrainian military intelligence, or HUR. The attacks are turning the Belgorod region to Ukraine’s north into one of the flashpoints of the current phase of the war. Russian local ­officials have urged residents to evacuate and called on Moscow to send reinforcements.

Deploying more troops to shore up Russia’s border regions could weaken its defences in parts of its 1000km frontline in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Moscow in recent months has built fortifications including trenches, minefields and antitank ditches. Kyiv has said it is ready to launch its offensive against Russia’s occupation forces, but has kept secret where it will try to strike a blow.

A Russian journalist who reached the outskirts of Novaya Tavolzhanka on Sunday afternoon told The Wall Street Journal that the last remaining villagers ­refused to leave for fear of coming under fire. He said he saw no Russian troops or military hardware in the area.

The Russian Volunteer Corps, one of the two groups that said they participated in Sunday’s cross-border attack, reported taking two Russian soldiers prisoner. It offered to release them if Mr Gladkov agreed to meet at a church in Novaya Tavolzhanka.

“You have a chance before 5pm today to come and chat without weapons and take home two Russian citizens, simple soldiers, whom you and your political leadership sent to war,” said a spokesman for the group.

In a statement on Telegram, Mr Gladkov called the raiders murderers, fascists and scoundrels. He suggested he would receive the Russian prisoners at a border crossing, if they were still alive. It couldn’t be confirmed whether the release happened.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had forced the opposing fighters to retreat under artillery fire, without offering evidence.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the paramilitary Wagner group that spearheaded the recent Russian capture of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, said he was ready to send troops to rescue the Russian soldiers taken prisoner.

“We have a defence ministry that was supposed to destroy terrorists in Ukraine. For some reason I’m not seeing any results,” he said in an audio message posted on Telegram. “Someone needs to have balls.”

In Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, partially occupied by Moscow, Kyiv-backed forces launched attempts to break through Russia’s defensive lines, said Russian-installed regional ­official Vladimir Rogov.

Earlier on Sunday, Russia launched a fresh barrage of missile strikes across Ukraine, killing a two-year-old child and wounding almost two dozen people in the country’s east.

Two cruise missiles hit a military air base on the outskirts of Kropyvnytskyi in central Ukraine, air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat told Ukrainian television. He didn’t give details about the damage caused. “All of Ukraine should be strengthened with air-defence systems,” Ihnat said.

Near the city of Dnipro in eastern Ukraine, rescue workers ­recovered the body of a girl from the rubble of a building struck by a Russian missile early on Sunday morning.

Serhiy Lysak, the head of the regional military administration, said the strike had brought the death count among children in the war to 17 in the Dnipropetrovsk ­region alone. Another five children were among the wounded in Sunday’s strike, he said. The UN said last Thursday that 535 children have been killed since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year, and more than a thousand have been injured. The vast majority of child casualties, 87 per cent, were caused by drone attacks and “explosive weapons with wide area effects,” including artillery, missile and airstrikes, the UN said.

A 9-year-old girl and her mother were killed in Kyiv on Thursday as they kicked and banged on a door leading to an air-raid shelter, where the guard on duty had fallen asleep.

Russia has intensified its missile and drone attacks on Ukraine in the past month, seeking to deplete the country’s air defences and keep them away from the front lines, where Ukrainian forces are gearing up for a widely anticipated offensive aimed at breaking through Russian defences and retaking occupied territory.

The Russian aerial attacks have become almost nightly since early May. Despite a high interception rate by Ukraine’s air defences, Russia has succeeded in hitting some military targets, including the headquarters of military intelligence in Kyiv, according to a person familiar with the matter, and an air base in the western Khmelnytskyi region, where officials said five aircraft were damaged a week ago.

Civilian areas have been particularly hard-hit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the deaths of children in Russia’s strikes.

“Many of them could have ­become famous scholars, artists, sports champions, contributing to Ukraine’s history,” he said in the aftermath of the Dnipro strike on Sunday. “They fell victim to the enemy’s missiles and hate, which keep ravaging and claiming lives of young Ukrainians.”

Mr Zelensky said it isn’t possible to establish the exact number of children injured in the war, because of active hostilities in parts of Ukraine and the fact that little information is available from parts of the country occupied by Russian forces.

Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians, though thousands have died as a result of its missile strikes and ground assaults on cities since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion early last year.

Dnipro is the closest major Ukrainian city to the eastern Donbas region, the capture of which Russia has made a priority. Dnipro had a pre-war population of almost a million and has become a hub for refugees from Donbas. It has also been the target of regular attacks by Russia.

In January, a Russian missile slammed into an apartment block on a Saturday afternoon, killing 45 people including six children, the youngest of whom was 11 months old. Last month, a Russian rocket attack hit a medical clinic in the city, killing at least four and wounding 30 people in what Zelensky called “another crime against humanity.”

The Wall Street Journal