A group of militants seized a border area of Russia
2023.03.02 10:55
A group of militants seized a border area of Russia
By Tiffany Smith
Budrigannews.com – On Thursday, Ukrainian forces maintained their positions in the derelict eastern city of Bakhmut, while Moscow claimed that its security forces had defeated Ukrainian saboteurs who had taken hostages in a cross-border raid.
The situation in Bryansk province, just north of the Ukrainian border, was now “under control,” according to Russia’s FSB security force. Moscow had previously claimed that armed Ukrainians had crossed the border, held hostages in a shop, fired on a car, and killed one person and wounded a child.
President Vladimir Putin stated in a brief television address that the assailants had fired on the car with intent knowing it contained civilians.
They will not accomplish anything. We will pound them,” he said, it was battling “psychological militants and neo-Nazis to say Russia”.
The reports were called a false Moscow provocation by an aide to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, but they also appeared to suggest that partisans were involved in some sort of incident.
The sound of fired artillery could be heard near the front lines west of Bakhmut in the Ukrainian-held town of Chasiv Yar.
New roadside trenches had been dug 20-40 meters (65-130 feet) apart in nearby towns and villages, suggesting that Ukrainian forces were bolstering defensive positions west of the city.
Bags in hand, a trickle of residents left the area.
“We were there until the very end. We desired to remain. However, how could we? The flat of our neighbor has now been destroyed. “It is time to leave,” Svitalana, 47, declared.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner private army, posted a video of his soldiers waving a Wagner banner and playing musical instruments atop a demolished multi-story building. He claimed that the video was shot near Bakhmut’s center. The location could not be immediately confirmed by Reuters.
A few thousand of Bakhmut’s 70,000 pre-war civilians are still inside as armies battle street by street, reducing the city to a blasted wasteland.
Russian troops have been moving north and south of the city to cut it off, supported by hundreds of thousands of reservists called up last year and thousands of prisoners recruited by Wagner from prison.
According to Moscow, which lost territory in the second half of 2022, capturing Bakhmut would be the first step toward seizing the remainder of the Donbass region. Kyiv asserts that the city has limited strategic value, but it is exhausting Russia’s invasion force in the bloodiest battle of the war and is causing Russian casualties.
“We will probably have to leave Bakhmut at some point. Serhiy Rakhmanin, a lawmaker from Ukraine, stated late on Wednesday that “holding it at any cost is pointless.” “Inflict as many Russian losses as possible” was the goal.
The Russian province of Bryansk reported the raid into the village of Lubechanye near the border, days after Moscow said Kyiv had used drones to attack targets deep within its territory.
Armed men who claimed to be members of the “Russian Volunteer Corps” made claims in online videos that they had crossed the border to fight “the bloody Putinite and Kremlin regime.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, a aide to Zelenskiy, characterized the Russian accounts of the incident as “a classic deliberate provocation.” He tweeted that Moscow “wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country and the growing poverty after the war.”
However, he also suggested that Russian partisans were planning an attack. He wrote, “Fear your partisans.”
Overnight, Russian missiles collided with a five-story apartment building in the southern city of Zaporizhzia, destroying the upper floors in the building’s center.
Journalists from Reuters witnessed rescue workers removing a man’s body from the wreckage as dawn broke. According to the police, at least four people had died. In shock, residents who had been evacuated were kept warm on a bus as workers attempted to clear the debris.
Reuters was informed by resident Yuliia Kharytenko, 36, that “the people were screaming from under the rubble.” Whatever we were wearing, we fled. Fearful, our cat is left there. We have no idea if it is still alive.
During its eight-month occupation of Kherson, which Ukrainian forces recaptured last year, an international team of war crimes investigators said on Thursday that the Russian state had funded and operated a network of at least 20 torture chambers.
The team stated that Russia’s objective was to “subjugate, re-educate or kill Ukrainian civic leaders and ordinary dissenters.”
Moscow has stated that it has not abused civilians in occupied areas. A request for comment from Reuters was not immediately received by the Kremlin.
Before warmer weather brings the season of sucking black mud, also known as “bezdorizhzhia” in Ukrainian and “raputitsa” in Russian, which is legendary in military history for destroying armies attempting to attack across Ukraine and western Russia, Russian forces are under pressure to secure advances now.
For its part, Kyiv is concentrating on defense and planning a counteroffensive later this year using new Western weapons.
One of the last international gatherings of high-ranking Western officials to which Russia is still invited, the G20 group of big economies’ meeting of foreign ministers in New Delhi was dominated by the war. India, the host nation, stated that countries other than China and Russia had condemned the war, echoing language from previous meetings.
According to a senior official at the U.S. State Department, Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines and assured him that Washington would support Ukraine for as long as it was necessary.
Blinken addressed the gathering, stating, “Unfortunately, this meeting has again been marred by Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine, its deliberate campaign of destruction against civilian targets, and its attack on the core principles of the UN Charter.”
