War in Ukraine: Russian volunteers fighting for Kyiv say they attacked a Russian village, Moscow confirms

Are Russians rebelling against their country? Volunteers fighting for Ukraine said Tuesday morning they had attacked a Russian village. At the same time, Moscow confirmed that the attack was being carried out from Ukrainian territory in the Kursk region in western Russia.

“We have crossed the border,” a unit called the Russian Legion of Freedom said on Telegram, posting a video showing three armored vehicles driving in the dark along a country road. Shortly after, the unit said it had “destroyed” Russian armored vehicles in the Kursk region village of Tiotkino, located in eastern Ukraine.

Russia confirms attack

The unit, called the Siberia battalion, said on Telegram: “As promised, we are bringing freedom and justice to our Russian soil.” “Heavy fighting is taking place on Russian territory,” she added. The unit also called on Russians to “ignore the presidential elections” on March 15-16-17. “We can only change the situation for the better with weapons in our hands,” she said, calling the vote a sham. The joint nature of these two attacks has not yet been confirmed.

The region’s Russian governor confirmed the attack and reported one minor injury, but denied any “breakthrough” by the attackers. “The sabotage and reconnaissance group tried to break through” towards the village of Tiotkino, “there were exchanges of fire, but there was no breakthrough,” he assured. “At the moment, shelling of the village of Tiotkino is being carried out from the Ukrainian side,” the official nevertheless added late in the morning.

A Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman said the Russian volunteer units were not acting on orders from Kyiv. “On the territory of the Russian Federation they act absolutely autonomously, independently,” Ukrainian media quote the words of Andrei Yusov.

Other drone attacks

This ground operation comes after drone attacks in several regions of Russia. Two Russian energy facilities were destroyed by fires, one hundreds of kilometers away, following a major Ukrainian drone attack on Monday night. According to Russian authorities, Ukrainian drones primarily targeted Orel and Kstovo, two Russian cities located about 160 km and 800 km from the Ukrainian border, respectively, and set fire to energy storage facilities there.

The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that it shot down 25 Ukrainian aircraft in the area of ​​Moscow (2), Leningrad (1), as well as in Belgorod (11), Kursk (11) and Bryansk (1). three border on Ukraine. The Russian army, for its part, bombed the city of Kupyansk (north-eastern Ukraine), the Kremenets region (west, Ternopil region) and two cities in the Dnepropetrovsk region (south), according to Ukrainian authorities, who reported three wounded. , fires and damage to houses in residential areas.

An oil refinery caught fire in the Kstovo industrial zone of the Nizhny Novgorod region, said regional governor Gleb Nikitin, assuring that emergency services are using all “necessary means” to fight the fire. The refinery, owned by Russian oil giant Lukoil, is one of the largest fuel producers in Russia, according to information posted on its official website. “There are enough resources and personnel to fight the fire,” Gleb Nikitin assured a few hours after the fire started, clarifying that a fire train was deployed there.

The governor of the Oryol region, Andrei Klychkov, also said that the fuel complex was attacked and that firefighters there were also “on the spot to bring the fire under control.” According to a representative of the emergency services, quoted by RIA Novosti, a tank containing petroleum products caught fire. At 07:00 GMT (10:00 local time, 8:00 Paris time), Andrei Klychkov assured that the fire had been localized and “the situation is completely under control.”