Moscow accuses Ukraine of sending saboteurs to kill civilians in Russia

For Vladimir Putin, the incursion of “saboteurs” Ukrainians in a region of southwestern Russia is “a terrorist attack”. Moscow says they opened fire on a car in the village of Lioubetchané in the Bryansk region, located just on the border with Ukraine, killing two civilians and injuring an 11-year-old child. But on the Ukrainian side, we deny being responsible.

According to the Ukrainian presidency, this is a deliberate provocation by Moscow. Mykhaïlo Podoliak, Volodimyr Zelensky’s main adviser, spoke on his Twitter account, denouncing the Kremlin’s desire to frighten its population to justify its offensive.

This is the first time since the beginning of the war that exchanges of fire have been reported on Russian soil. Until then, the attacks attributed to kyiv had come from the air, several drones notably targeted areas in the south and west of the country three days ago. The FSB, the Russian security service, explained that the situation was now under control and that the “Ukrainian nationalists had been repelled by a massive artillery strike”.

The thesis of an extreme right organization

According to the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta Europe, and Michael Colborne of the NGO Bellingcat specializing in information verification, the attack was claimed by a far-right organization, the Russian Volunteer Corps, founded last year. Its leader Denis Nikitin has links with the Ukrainian army, but there is nothing to confirm today that he acted on orders from kyiv, which defends the thesis of an internal conflict. For Andriy Yusov, a government spokesman, the Russian Volunteer Corps is made up of people “who are fighting arms in hand against Vladimir Putin and his supporters.”