Clashes broke out on Monday in Russian villages near the Ukrainian border, according to local officials and verified videos. The Russian regional governor said that a Ukrainian sabotage group had crossed into Russian territory, while Kyiv said that anti-Kremlin Russian partisans were behind the attacks.
Video posted to the Telegram messaging app and verified by The New York Times showed smoke rising from near the border crossing at Grayvoron, north of the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. It was not immediately possible to determine the cause.
The regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said that a Ukrainian sabotage group had entered Russian territory near the city of Belgorod on Monday morning and that the Russian military, border service, and intelligence agency were “taking the necessary measures to eliminate the enemy.” On Monday evening, Mr. Gladkov announced he was putting the region on a counterterrorism footing, establishing temporary restrictions of movement and suspending activities that involve dangerous substances.
The Ukrainian government typically follows a policy of deliberate ambiguity about strikes inside Russian territory. On Monday, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Mykhailo Podolyak, said Kyiv was watching the events in Belgorod “with interest and studying the situation, but it has nothing to do with it.”
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that the perpetrators were “opposition-minded citizens of Russia.” Andrii Yusov, the representative of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, told the Ukrainian news outlet Hromadske that Russian partisans were working to create “a certain security zone in the border regions of Russia bordering Ukraine.”
A group calling itself the Free Russia Legion claimed to be behind the attacks. The group said its ranks were made up of Russians and called for like-minded countrymen to join their efforts. The group later said it had “liberated” the border village of Kozinka along with another pro-Ukraine group known as the Russian Volunteer Corps. Those claims could not be independently confirmed.
Battles took place Monday afternoon in several locations between the border and the town of Grayvoron, six miles away, according to reports published on Telegram
Mr. Gladkov initially played down reports of violence along the border, saying there was a “massive informational attack” underway, and sought to calm residents’ nerves in a video posted Monday morning. He later said that at least two people had been injured.
The Kremlin also sought to downplay the incident, with its spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov telling the TASS news agency that it was a Ukrainian attempt to “divert attention from the situation” in Bakhmut, the eastern city that Russian forces claimed over the weekend to have captured after a nearly yearlong battle.
It would not be the first time pro-Ukrainian fighters attacked villages across the Russian border. In early March, the Russian Volunteer Corps claimed it had staged a brief incursion into villages in Bryansk, another Russian region on Ukraine’s border. The Russian Volunteer Corps is led by a Russian nationalist in exile, and is part of a motley collection of groups of Russian citizens who oppose Mr. Putin’s rule and have taken up arms for the Ukrainian cause during the 15-month-old war.
Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting.
