Pro-Ukraine Exiled Russian Fighters Claim Cross-Border Attacks in Southern Russia

Pro-Ukrainian militants said they have crossed into Russian border regions and launched attacks this week. However, Russia insists it beat back the raids, staged three days before it holds a presidential election.

Russian forces are seen in a video released by the Freedom of Russia Legion, mainly composed of anti-Putin Russian fighters, deserting Tetkino, a municipality in the Kursk region on the Russian side of the border.

Pro-Ukraine Exiled Russian Fighters Launch Attacks

Servicemen of the pro-Ukrainian St. Maria battalion take part in a drill near the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol on October 8, 2014. US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland said US is providing Ukrainian border guards with $10 million for armour and protective gear, with another $16.4 million coming later for scanning and communication technology that will bolster its frontier with Russia. Kiev accuses Russia of sending troops and equipment across the border to fuel a pro-Russian separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
(Photo : Alexander KHUDOTEPLY/AFP via Getty Images)

Forces from other pro-Ukrainian groups, such as the Siberian Battalion and the Russian Volunteer Corps, also threatened to invade the Kursk and Belgorod regions. According to researchers from the Insitute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group used tanks, armored vehicles, and drones to carry out these operations.

Moscow initially denied that the attackers had entered any places within Russia. Later, it also claimed that the enemy fighters were forced out after making limited progress into Russia.

The Russian ministry of defense thanked Russian soldiers and said that all attacks by Ukrainian terrorists have been repelled. The situation on the ground appears to be somewhat less clear than claimed by Russian authorities.

Sim Tack, chief military analyst at Force Analysis, a conflict monitoring organization and state, said that at the moment, pro-Ukrainian forces and the battles surrounding Tetkino seem capable of controlling part of this locality.

Russia's national guard reported on Thursday that it was fighting off attacks from pro-Ukrainian groups in the Kursk region as border confrontations continued.

The Russian defense ministry said that its forces had killed 195 Ukrainian soldiers and destroyed five tanks and four armored infantry vehicles two days after claiming to have killed 234 Ukrainian soldiers in another border assault.

In a joint statement, three pro-Kyiv militant groups demanded that the Russian government evacuate residents from the Belgorod and Kursk districts, arguing that "civilians should not suffer from the war."

Russian-Ukraine War Expert Compares Past, Current Incursions

Huseyn Aliyev, a specialist on the Russia-Ukraine war at the University of Glasgow, said that the present incursions are very similar to what happened in the spring and summer of 2023. Aliyev claimed that Pro-Kyiv Russian forces had crossed the border in that invasion a little further south in the Belgorod area.

Furthermore, he said they had briefly taken control of a settlement before fleeing due to Russian artillery fire.

At the time unprecedented, last year's invasions highlighted Russia's inadequate national territory protection and put pressure on the country. At that point, the war's dynamics were to Ukraine's advantage because its army had successfully repelled Russian attacks.

The 2023 raids created the impression that Ukraine could launch an attack anywhere since they started before Kyiv's counteroffensive.

Today, the situation is quite different, and now that the counteroffensive has failed, Ukraine is further behind. Aliyev noted that Moscow has built a defensive line about twenty kilometers inside Russian territory, which this line of trenches extends from the north of the Kursk region to the south of the Belgorod region.

According to Aliyev, Russia had no defensive positions before the previous year, so deeper intrusions into Russian territory may occur. Tetkino was targeted by pro-Ukrainian forces due to its vulnerable situation.

"The village captured is not behind the defensive line. It's a buffer zone, what Russia calls a security zone," Aliyev said. "On the other side of the border, the region is mostly under the control of Ukrainians, so it's not difficult for pro-Ukraine forces to cross the border and occupy that village."