16:19, 2 March 2023
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. Russian officials accused Ukrainian saboteurs on Thursday of crossing into western Russia and attacking local villages, an accusation that Ukraine denied and alleged would be used by Moscow to step up attacks.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak described the Russian reports as “a classic deliberate provocation.”
Russia “wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country (and) the growing poverty after the year of war,” he tweeted, suggesting that the attack was the work of Russian partisans.
Meanwhile, Korrespondent news outlet reported that the Russian Volunteer Corps – a group of anti-Kremlin fighters – has claimed responsibility for the raid.
The Russian Volunteer Corps called itself a “liberation army that came to its own land” and urged Russians to “take up arms and fight Putin’s bloody regime” in a video posted to social media.