Rebel raids deep inside Russia send a message to Putin
Fighting has broken out in Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions, in a blow to Putin before ‘rubber-stamp’ presidential elections.
Heavily armed Russians fighting for Ukraine have carried out their biggest cross-border attack since the start of the war, coinciding with a massive wave of drone and rocket strikes by Ukrainian forces aimed at targets deep inside Russia.
Fighting is believed to have erupted in Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions on Tuesday, with the Freedom of Russia Legion, the Siberia Battalion and the Russian Volunteer Corps carrying out a joint operation. All three are made up of Russian citizens but are under the control of the Ukrainian military.
Hours after the border incursion a Russian missile strike in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home town of Kryvyi Rih left three dead and dozens wounded on Tuesday, in an attack Kyiv warned would not go “unpunished”.
Rescuers in Kryvyi Rih could be seen evacuating wounded civilians from a burning multi-storey residential building in a video published by Kyiv’s interior ministry.
“The Russian attack claimed the lives of three people,” the governor of the central Dnipropetrovsk region, Sergiy Lysak, said on Telegram. At least 44 people were injured, eight of whom were in a serious condition, including three children, he said in a later post.
Mr Zelensky said a residential building nine storeys tall was hit and offered his condolences to those affected in his evening address.
“We will inflict losses on the Russian state in response – quite rightly. They in the Kremlin must learn that terror does not go unpunished for them,” he said.
The border raid will come as a blow to President Vladimir Putin before rubber-stamp elections on Sunday.
Maximillian “Caesar” Andronnikov, the Legion’s leader, said in an online video addressed to his fellow Russians before the start of the operation: “We come to liberate you from poverty and fear (and) from dictatorship.”
Tanks with Legion flags are believed to have entered the two border regions simultaneously. Video posted online was said to show the Legion destroying a Russian armoured personnel carrier. Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence service, said the groups were operating independently on Russian territory.
Alexei Baranovsky, a spokesman for the Legion, said: “Our main task is not only to damage the Putin regime but also to get rid of it. We understand of course that it is impossible to do this straight away. But step by step, we are increasing our numbers and our capabilities so we can carry out more daring and larger-scale operations.”
Many of the Russian fighters have family ties in Ukraine and had been living in the country for years when Russia invaded in 2022.
“The village of Tyotkino, Kursk region, is completely under the control of Russian liberation forces,” the Legion said.
“Putin’s army is fleeing the village, leaving its positions and abandoning heavy equipment.”
It later said that the battle for the village was continuing.
The Kremlin’s FSB state security service, which is responsible for border security, said the groups had been prevented from crossing the border and had taken heavy losses. The Russian defence ministry said more than 230 fighters had been killed and more than a dozen armoured vehicles, including seven tanks, had been destroyed. The claim could not be verified.
Roman Starovoyt, the governor of the Kursk region, said the rebel units had entered Russia and there had been a battle in Tyotkino. In the city of Kursk, 135km from Tyotkino, the mayor said schoolchildren would study remotely until the end of the week “in connection with recent events”.
Instability on Russia’s borders will be an embarrassment to Putin as he prepares to secure a fifth term of office against a handful of nominal, Kremlin-approved opponents on Sunday.
The border attacks got under way as Ukrainian drones struck fuel refineries in the Oryol and Nizhny Novgorod regions. Video images showed a huge fire at the Norsi refinery, which is thought to process 5 per cent of all of Russia’s oil output. Nizhny Novgorod is more than 1000km from the Ukrainian border.
Drones were also reportedly shot down close to Moscow and St Petersburg, while Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine had fired eight RM-70 rockets and one Tochka-U missile at the Belgorod region, close to the border.
In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine had halted Russia’s advances in the east of the country, made amid delays in Western military assistance.
“The situation is much better than it has been over the past three months,” he told France’s BFM TV.
“We have recovered in the east. The advance of Russian troops has been stopped.”
The White House confirmed overnight on Tuesday that it would send emergency weapons worth $US300m ($454m) to Ukraine, even while President Joe Biden’s main bill to provide military aid remains blocked by Republicans in congress.
Jake Sullivan, his National Security Adviser, said the funding would pay for artillery rounds and munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (Himars), but he admitted the shipment was “nowhere near enough to meet Ukraine’s battlefield needs and it will not prevent Ukraine from running out of ammunition”.
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