Russian forces are clashing with a Ukrainian sabotage group that illegally crossed into the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, and opened fire on civilians, law enforcement agencies said Thursday.
The statements could not be independently verified, and Kyiv dismissed the claims from Moscow as a “deliberate provocation.”
Bryansk region Governor Alexander Bogomaz said a sabotage and reconnaissance group from Ukraine entered the village of Lyubechanye and fired at a moving car, killing one person and injuring a 10-year-old child who was hospitalized.
“In the Bryansk region’s border district of Klimovsky, the FSB of Russia and additional forces of the Russian Defense Ministry are taking measures to destroy armed Ukrainian nationalists who violated the state border,” Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said.
Civilian casualties have been reported, the state-run TASS news agency reported, citing law enforcement agencies.
The saboteurs may be holding as many as six people hostage, TASS reported.
The Readovka Telegram news channel reported, citing unidentified sources, that the sabotage group consisted of 40 people.
Elsewhere in the Bryansk region, a residential building in the village of Sushany caught fire after being struck by a drone, Bogomaz said, while two houses were damaged by mortar fire in the village of Lomakovka.
The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin was receiving “constant” updates from the FSB, Defense Ministry and National Guard on the clashes, which spokesman Dmitry Peskov described as a “terrorist attack.”
Ukraine however dismissed the claims as a “deliberate provocation.”
“The story about (a) sabotage group in Russia is a classic deliberate provocation. Russia wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country and the growing poverty after the year of war,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said on Twitter.
Ukraine’s command in the north on Feb. 23 had warned that Russia may be planning a false-flag operation in the area, “most likely … to accuse the Ukrainian defenders of violating territorial integrity.”
Russia’s border regions have regularly reported cross-border aerial strikes since Moscow invaded Ukraine just over one year ago.
But Thursday’s incident marks the first reported instance of on-the-ground fighting inside Russian territory.