Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday condemned the “terrorist” attack after Moscow reported an incursion by Ukrainian “saboteurs” into a region in southwestern Russia on the border with Ukraine, which Kyiv denied, writes AFP.

According to the Russian authorities, two civilians were killed and an 11-year-old child was injured after “saboteurs” opened fire on a car in the village of Lyubechane, Bryansk region, right on the border with Ukraine.

Russian news agencies, citing anonymous witnesses and officials, also reported that the alleged attackers had taken hostages. AFP could not immediately verify the claims.

The Ukrainian presidency rejects these accusations, calling them a “deliberate provocation” aimed at justifying Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine for more than a year.

Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, several Russian regions have been bombed. But the invasion of “saboteurs” is a rarity.

In a televised speech, Putin condemned the attack by “neo-Nazis” and “terrorists” who “opened fire on civilians.” “We will crush them,” he said.

According to the Kremlin, Putin canceled a planned trip to the Russian Caucasus on Thursday to monitor developments in the Bryansk region.

“This is a terrorist attack. Measures are being taken to destroy terrorists,” Kremlin press secretary Dmytro Peskov told reporters.

During the evening, the special services (the FSB, successor to the KGB) announced that the situation was “under control” and that the “Ukrainian nationalists” had been pushed back into Ukraine and there had been a “massive artillery strike”.

According to the FSB, a “large amount of explosives” was discovered, and demining work is underway.

“Classic challenge” / Russians in sports suits as terrorists

According to the governor of the region, Oleksandr Bogomaz, “a reconnaissance and subversive group penetrated from Ukraine into the village of Lubetyan” in the Klymovsky district of the Bryansk region.

According to him, the saboteurs opened fire on a moving vehicle, killing two occupants and injuring a child.

This “story” of the saboteurs “is a deliberate, classic provocation. Russia wants to scare its population in order to justify its offensive,” Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the President of Ukraine, responded on Twitter.

In two videos posted on social media, four men in tracksuits, who are said to be members of a group of “Russian volunteers” of the Ukrainian army, claim to have infiltrated the Bryansk region.

In the viral videos, which AFP could not verify, the men deny taking hostages or killing civilians and criticize Moscow.

Bogomaz also reported on the attack of the Ukrainian drone on the village of Sutsyany, as a result of which a house caught fire, as well as on mortar shelling that damaged two houses in the city of Lomakovka, Bryansk region.

And in the Kursk region, also on the border with Ukraine, as a result of the Ukrainian shelling of the village of Tetkino, one person died, the authorities reported.

“We will evict all the occupiers

Moscow reported an increase in the number of Ukrainian drone incursions into Russian territory and annexed Crimea this week. The plane fell even for the first time in the Moscow region.

According to local authorities, in Ukraine, as a result of an attack on a residential building in Zaporizhzhia in the south of Ukraine on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, at least three people were killed and six others were injured.

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, condemned the actions of a “terrorist state that wants to make every day a day of terror.” “We will drive out all the occupiers, and they will be responsible for everything,” he added.

There was no improvement on the diplomatic front either, with the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi on Thursday marked by deep divisions. The participants failed to agree on the final declaration, as Moscow and Beijing refused to sign it.

Despite the brief contact between the head of American diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, the latter assessed that the Westerners had turned this G20 meeting into a “farce”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Thursday that he is negotiating with Kyiv and other allied countries on “future security commitments for Ukraine.”