President Vladimir Putin said Russia had been hit by a “terrorist attack” in the southern region bordering Ukraine carried out by what he described as a Ukrainian “sabotage group” which he vowed to crush, state news agency Tass reported on Thursday.
In an address on the launch of an educational program, he praised the soldiers of the national army who were protecting Russia against “neo-Nazis and terrorists such as those… who today carried out another act of terror, committed another crime, infiltrated the border area and opened fire on civilians,” Tass quoted him as saying.
Putin consistently describes the democratically elected leaders of Ukraine as “neo-Nazis” intent on committing genocide against Russian-speakers in the east of the country. This accusation is rejected by Kyiv and its Western allies, who denounce it as unfounded war propaganda.
Putin emphatically stressed that the “saboteurs” were well aware that they were attacking a civilian vehicle. “They saw it was a civilian car, saw that civilians and children were inside, that it was just a Niva car, but no, they opened fire on them,” Putin added.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) had said earlier on Thursday that “Ukrainian saboteurs” infiltrated the border district of Bryansk through an area directly adjacent to the Ukrainian border. It also announced that an operation was underway in the area to “eliminate the infiltrators.”
The Governor of Bryansk said the attack killed two people and injured an 11-year-old boy.
Putin said: “This is violence, real crime, committed exactly by the neo-Nazis I’ve just mentioned, and by their masters.” He vowed: “They won’t succeed, we will crush them.”
Ukraine accused Russia of staging a false “provocation” as part of its war propaganda. Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said: “The story about a Ukrainian sabotage group in Russia is a classic deliberate provocation.”
He added: “Russia wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country and the growing poverty after the year of war.”
Al Arabiya News
