Ukraine calls out ‘provocation’ as Moscow says forces are battling ‘saboteurs’ | CPT PPP Coverage

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Kremlin officials have claimed Russian forces are battling a sabotage group that infiltrated a region that borders Ukraine and took several people hostage.

Kremlin chiefs have said “Ukrainian terrorists” had mounted a cross-border attack and were reported by Russian officials to have taken hostages – although the claims could not be verified.

Ukraine denied the claims, calling the statement a “deliberate provocation”.

A senior adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that reports of a sabotage attack by Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Bryansk region are a “deliberate provocation”.

“The story about (a) Ukrainian sabotage group in RF is a classic deliberate provocation,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter.

“RF wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country & the growing poverty after the year of war.”

Russia’s border regions have been increasingly volatile since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine a year ago in what it called its “special military operation” with reports of shelling and sporadic sabotage.

The FSB security service said in a statement to Russian news agencies on Thursday that its own forces and the army were trying to liquidate what it described as “an armed group of Ukrainian nationalists” who had crossed the border.

The reports have not been verified.

Bryansk governor Alexander Bogomaz said the Ukrainians had shot and killed one person.

“Today, a Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group penetrated the Klimovsky district in the village of Lubechanye,” Bogomaz said on his Telegram channel.

“Saboteurs fired on a moving car. As a result of the attack, one resident was killed and a ten-year-old child was wounded.”

He said Ukrainian armed forces had launched a drone attack and fired artillery shells at other areas near the border.

Reuters, the news agency which compiled the report, was unable to immediately verify the reports.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said president Vladimir Putin was receiving regular updates from security agencies and defence minister Sergei Shoigu about the situation.

Mr Peskov denied reports that Mr Putin planned to hold an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Thursday, but said he would hold a meeting of the council on Friday when it convenes regularly.

British military intelligence said on Wednesday that Russia was launching drone attacks against Ukraine from the Bryansk region, which lies to the north of Ukraine and is closer to the capital Kyiv than other launch sites.

Russia’s state TASS news agency said the Ukrainians had infiltrated two villages, taking local residents hostage in one of them. The RIA news agency said several people had been taken hostage in a store in the village of Lubechanye, less than one kilometre from Russia’s border with Ukraine.

Russia has accused Ukrainian saboteurs of infiltrating Bryansk before.

In December, the FSB security service said a four-person Ukrainian “sabotage group” had been liquidated while trying to enter Bryansk.

Mr Putin told the FSB this week that it needed to step up its guard against espionage and what he called terrorist threats emanating from Ukraine and the West.

“Your task is to put a barrier in the way of sabotage groups, to stop attempts to illegally transport weapons and ammunition into Russia,” he said in a speech on Tuesday.

Warning have been issued in the past that Russia could use false flag attacks by manufacturing provocations to justify further escalations.