Russia President, Vladimir Putin has vowed to crushed those behind the Bryansk region terrorist attack which affected his people.
The country was hit by a “terrorist attack” in the southern Bryansk region bordering Ukraine, and Putin allegedly said it was a Ukrainian sabotage group that had fired at civilians.
Moscow said the Ukrainians had crossed the frontier, fired on a car killing one person and wounding a child, and held hostages in a shop.
Russia’s FSB security service said “Ukrainian nationalists” had been pushed back over the Ukrainian border.
“In order to avoid civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, the enemy has been pushed into Ukrainian territory”, the domestic security service said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.
The group was targeted with a “massive artillery strike,” the FSB added. It said a large number of explosive devices had been found and demining was taking place.
Ukraine accused Russia of staging a false “provocation”, but also appeared to imply some form of operation had indeed been carried out by Russian anti-government partisans.
Senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Mykhailo Podolyak, said on Twitter: “The story about [the] Ukrainian sabotage group in RF [Russian Federation] is a classic deliberate provocation.”
He said Russia should “fear your partisans”. A day earlier, after apparent attempted drone attacks on Russia, which Moscow blamed on Ukraine, Podolyak had responded in a similar manner, suggesting attempts at domestic assaults.
Amid reports of shelling and sporadic sabotage, Russia’s border regions have become increasingly volatile since Moscow invaded Ukraine a year ago in what it called a “special military operation”.
Putin, in a televised address, said: “They won’t achieve anything. We will crush them”.