Three military and paramilitary units made up of Russian soldiers fighting for Ukraine claimed on March 12 to have launched an incursion into Russia.
Taking a humiliating swipe at Vladimir Putin, these groups took to their accounts on the messaging platform Telegram to claim they had entered western Russia from Ukraine.
The Freedom of Russia Legion said in its Telegram post: “We will take our land from the regime centimetre by centimetre.”
The Legion also seemingly referred to the upcoming presidential election in Russia, set to take place between March 15 and 17, as their post read: “The people will vote for whom they want, not for whom they have to. Russians will live freely.”
This group is a Ukrainian-based paramilitary unit of Russian citizens opposed to Putin’s regime and the invasion of Ukraine led by the Kremlin.
Another group to have claimed to be carrying out an incursion inside the Russian territory is the Siberian Battalion, a unit that has pledged allegiance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine also made up of Russian citizens.
Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence, said these groups are not linked to Kyiv, contrary to what the Kremlin has been trying to allege over the past years of war, and claimed to Ukraine’s 24 Channel that these two units – alongside the paramilitary Russian Volunteer Corps – were carrying out the operation independently of Ukraine.
Kyiv has stated multiple times it only carries out operations within its internationally-recognised borders, which include the Crimean Peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
The United 24 Telegram channel shared a video by the Corps which they claim shows armed men raiding the Belgorod region, which neighbours Ukraine.
The paramilitary group claimed: “The army of the Kremlin regime is throwing down its weapons before even starting a battle.”
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has denied that Ukraine-based armed groups have managed to break through its western border, state-news agency RIA wrote.
Separately, TASS, another state-news agency, reported the FSB claiming that no Ukrainian groups had entered populated areas in the western Russian regions of Belgorod and Kursk.
Russian forces, they also claimed, killed 100 people and destroyed six tanks and 20 armoured vehicles as they were “attempting to penetrate” the border.
This isn’t the first time paramilitary corps supporting Ukraine have claimed to have carried out raids within Russia.
These claims come after a difficult night for Russia, which has been targeted by a barrage of drone attacks – with two hitting and damaging two big refineries.
