Vladimir Putin: Latest conflict could be sign that 'Russians will begin to wake up', official claims

More than a year ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian soldiers to invade Ukraine. Now, for the first time, fighting has been reported on Russian soil.

Vladimir Putin accuses Ukraine of 'terrorist attack'

Fighting reportedly occurred in Russia's southwestern border region of Bryansk. Via video conference, Putin declared it was a 'terrorist attack' on behalf of Ukraine:

Today they committed another terrorist act, another crime, penetrated the border area and opened fire on civilians.

They saw that it was a civilian car, that civilians and children were sitting there, and opened fire. It is exactly such people who set themselves the task of depriving us of historical memory. They will achieve nothing, we will put the squeeze on them.

As a result, he convened his National Security Council for a meeting today, Friday 3 March.

Ukraine says it was Russian partisans

However, Ukraine denies the Russian President's accusations and insists the attackers were Russian partisans. Senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Mykhailo Podolyak, said on Twitter:

The story about [a] Ukrainian sabotage group in RF [Russian Federation] is a classic deliberate provocation.

RF [Russia] wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country

A short time later, a group called the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) claimed responsibility for the attacks via a video statement, saying they had crossed the border to fight what they described as 'the bloody Putinite and Kremlin regime'. They said:

We have crossed the state border. We are not fighting the civilians, we do not kill unarmed people. It is time for the Russian citizens to understand that they are not slaves. Fight!

The Russian Volunteer Corps came to the Bryansk region to show their compatriots that there is hope, that free Russian people with weapons in their hands can fight the regime.

They added that reports that they shot at civilians or took hostages were 'a lie of the Kremlin propagandists'.

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A sign of growing upheaval in Russia?

That RDK have claimed responsibility would support the theory of targeted Russian misinformation - but it is unclear whether the attacks were coordinated with the Ukrainian military. Indeed, the RDK has claimed to be a 'Russian volunteer formation that is part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine', however this hasn't been confirmed by Kyiv.

As Pavel Felgenhauer, a Russian military analyst, told Al Jazeera:

It seems right now a rather strange story; the Ukrainians say it’s not them, and Russians say it’s them.

That the RDK is a group made up of Russians fighting against their own country could be a sign of discord within Russia, as spokesperson for Ukrainian military intelligence, Andriy Yusov, told Ukrainian outlet Hromadske. He said:

These are people who with weapons in their hands are fighting the Putin regime and those who support it... Maybe Russians will begin to wake up.

Read more:Vladimir Putin faces fresh criticism from Russian troops: 'We do not know who our commander is'

This article has been adapted from Gentside DE.

Sources used:

RND: Putin ruft Sitzung des Sicherheitsrats ein: Werk von Partisanen? Russische Behörden melden Gefechte in Grenzregion nahe Ukraine

Frankfurter Rundschau: Partisanen greifen in russischer Stadt an – Putin spricht von „Terroranschlag“

Reuters: 'Putin says Ukrainian group attacks border region, Kyiv denies Russian 'provocation'

BBC: 'Putin accuses Ukraine of border 'terrorist act' in Russian village'

Newsweek: 'Bryansk 'Terrorist Attack'—What We Know As Putin Claims Ukrainian Incursion'

Al Jazeera: 'Russia accuses Ukraine of cross-border attack in Bryansk'