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Shadowy pro-Ukraine “Russian liberation forces” said they took control of a Russian town just over the Ukrainian border Tuesday as part of a seemingly well-coordinated assault by anti-Kremlin groups designed to bring the war to Russian soil.
Separately, Ukrainian long-range drones reportedly hit two Russian oil facilities on Tuesday, just days before President Vladimir Putin is expected to cruise to an easy victory in his country’s looming presidential elections.
Tuesday’s multiple attacks on Russian soil could cast doubt on Mr. Putin’s long-running narrative that Russia has been mostly unaffected by the war in Ukraine, which marked its second anniversary last month. But the exact nature of the clashes on Tuesday, and the damage caused by the Ukrainian drone strikes, were not immediately clear.
Three separate pro-Ukraine Russian groups claimed incursions into Russian territory. The Freedom for Russia Legion said on its Telegram channel that it had taken full control of the town of Tetkino in Russia’s Kursk region. The group claimed that Russian forces abandoned their positions.
“Putin’s army quickly leaves the village, leaving positions behind and abandoning heavy equipment,” the group said in a post on its Telegram channel.
Two other groups, the Siberian Battalion and Russian Volunteer Corps, claimed their own incursions into Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions, and claimed they had defeated Russian forces in brief clashes.
“Landing battle on Russian territory. They defeated the position of Putin’s henchmen,” the Siberian Battalion wrote on Telegram, along with video footage purportedly showing the firefights with Russian troops.
The representative of Ukraine’s intelligence agency, Andrii Yusov, told Ukrainska Pravda that the military groups are made up of Russian citizens who revolted against their own government.
“On the territory of the Russian Federation, they operate completely autonomously and independently,” he said, according to English-language media accounts.
But the Kremlin vehemently denied the pro-Ukraine groups’ version of events. The governor of Russia’s Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, confirmed that Tetkino was under fire but said the attack was repelled.
“There was an attempt by a sabotage and reconnaissance group to break through. There was a shooting battle, but there was no breakthrough,” he said in a social media post.
In its own version of events, the Russian Defense Ministry said that its military and security forces killed 234 fighters while thwarting the incursion. In a statement, the ministry blamed the attack on the “Kyiv regime” and “Ukraine’s terrorist formations,” insisting that the Russian military and border forces were able to stop the attackers and avert a cross-border raid. It also said the attackers lost seven tanks and five armored vehicles.
Other attacks in the Kursk region were also repulsed, Russian officials said.
The Kyiv government has walked a fine line in responding to Mr. Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukrainian officials have talked of taking the fight to Russian soil but face restrictions imposed by Western allies on whether their weaponry can be used beyond a defense of Ukraine’s own territory.
Elsewhere, one Ukrainian drone reportedly struck a Russian oil refinery in the Nizhny Novgorod region, nearly 500 miles from the Ukraine border, according to media reports. Another Ukrainian drone reportedly hit an oil depot in Oryol, just under 100 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border.
Russian officials said that other Ukrainian drones were shot down across Russia before reaching their targets.
While the details of Tuesday’s various incidents remain murky, they appear to represent a coordinated assault by Ukrainian troops and pro-Ukrainian proxy forces on the Russian homeland. That assault comes as Russian troops make gains elsewhere across the disputed Donbas region amid growing signs that the momentum of the war has shifted firmly to Moscow’s side.
In May 2023, Russian officials alleged that dozens of Ukrainian militants crossed into one of its border towns in the Belgorod region, striking targets and forcing an evacuation, before more than 70 of the attackers were killed or pushed back. Ukrainian officials have denied any link with the group, The Associated Press reported.
• This story is based in part on wire service reports.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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