KYIV: Armed fighters purporting to be Russian citizens who oppose the Kremlin said they carried out cross-border incursions into western Russia from Ukraine using tanks on Tuesday, but Moscow said it had repelled the attacks.

Ukraine said the groups were acting independently. But the border raids, carried out days before a presidential election in Russia and just over two years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, were widely seen as backed by Kyiv.

“This is only the first day (of the operation). But the elections, as we know, are only at the end of the week... All the most interesting things are yet to come,” said Alexei Baranovsky, a spokesperson for the Freedom of Russia Legion.

The group said it had taken full control of Tyotkino, a village on the edge of Russia’s Kursk region bordering Ukraine, and aired aerial footage, apparently shot by a drone, showing several soldiers running across a field.

Group claims control of a village on the edge of Kursk region which borders Ukraine

Baranovsky, speaking to Reuters on a Zoom call from an undisclosed location, said the bulk of the forces used in the operation were in the Kursk region. He said the attack could force Russia to pull in reserves to defend the area, relieving Russian offensive pressure on Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine.

“We are distracting the reserves, the attention of the Russian army. They are forced to transfer reserves.. this is also our contribution to the defence of Ukraine,” he said. The group said it had destroyed a Russian armoured personnel carrier and that the border incursions had been undertaken alongside two other Ukraine-based groups — the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Siberian Battalion.

Russia’s TASS news agency cited the local governor as saying one person had been wounded by Ukrainian shelling in Tyotkino. The Russian defence ministry said it had beaten back the attackers and forced them to retreat.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2024