(CNN) Russian security officials on Thursday claimed that a small Ukrainian armed group crossed the Russian border into the southern Bryansk region, allegations Kyiv dismissed as “classic deliberate provocation” by the Kremlin.
The Security Service of Russia (FSB) said Thursday in a statement through state media agency RIA Novosti that the agency was conducting operations after an “armed Ukrainian nationalist who violated the state border” in the district. President Vladimir Putin later described the incident as a terrorist attack, and a local official said two civilians were killed.
CNN cannot independently verify the Russian claims, and local media have not released images of the alleged incidents, any type of confrontation, or an alleged raid reported by Russian authorities.
US and Ukrainian officials have in the past warned that Russia was planning so-called “false flag” attacks along Russia’s border with Ukraine as a pretext for a military escalation, including Russian claims ahead of last year’s full-scale invasion that Ukraine “saboteurs” dispatched “Across the Russian border.
The Bryansk region borders Ukraine to the south and Belarus to the west, the closely allied nation with Russia that helped facilitate Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
The governor of the region, Alexander Bogomaz, said on his Telegram channel on Wednesday that two civilians were killed and a 10-year-old child was injured in the village of Lyubechan. According to RIA Novosti, Bogomaz said in the village of Sushany, also in the Klimovsky district, a residential building was set on fire by a grenade dropped by an alleged Ukrainian drone.
Putin canceled a planned trip to southern Russia because of the Bryansk incident, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier Thursday. While commenting on the incident, Putin did not specify whether the group had crossed the border from Ukraine, instead blaming “neo-Nazis” for the attack without giving further details. He also promised to “clean it up.”
“Today, [they] committed another terrorist attack, entered the border area and opened fire on civilians,” Putin said during a television session on Thursday. “You saw that civilians and children were sitting there. [in] an ordinary Niva (car). They opened fire on her.”
An aide in the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Mykhailo Podolyak, said the alleged raid was either a Russian provocation or the work of local partisans who oppose the Kremlin and deny any Ukrainian involvement.
“Ukraine is not attacking,” said Podolyak. “This is either a provocation from the Russian side or Russian partisans who are beginning to dismantle the Putin regime. Because they still want to preserve some political chances for the post-war future of Russia, which will lose this war.”
Podolyak also said this type of operation was consistent with previous Russian provocations.
“This is classic Russia. It’s always about provocation, lies, it always creates information pretexts,” he said. “Ukraine does not attack Russian territory, does not send special reconnaissance groups there, does not kill people, especially civilians. Ukraine doesn’t need that. This is not a strategic object and there is no point in going there.”
“Or it’s something else,” he also said. “Either Russian partisans are actively beginning to show their personality because they want to prove that a protest movement is also possible in Russia.”