• Ukrainian sabotage squad infiltrated Russian border territory and opened fire on civilians.
• Killing one person and injuring a child.
• Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said steps are being taken to destroy them.

In a “terrorist act,” according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a Ukrainian sabotage squad infiltrated a Russian border territory on Thursday and started shooting at residents.

Earlier the governor of Bryansk region said “saboteurs from Ukraine” had fired at a civilian car in Lyubechane, a border village, killing one person and injuring a child.

Kyiv vehemently refuted the Russian assertion.

No outside source has independently confirmed the reported occurrence.

It was “a classic premeditated provocation,” according to a tweet from Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s advisor Mykhaylo Podolyak.

He declared, “RF [Russia] intends to frighten its people to defend the attack on another country.

Russian border regions, especially the Bryansk region, have historically been the target of Ukrainian missile and drone strikes.

The rumors of Ukrainian ground soldiers into Russia, however, have not been verified.

Mr. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “steps to destroy these terrorists are being taken”. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said FSB forces and regular troops were battling “Ukrainian nationalists” who had crossed into Russia.

Speaking on Russian state TV, President Putin said “today they committed another terrorist act, another crime, penetrated the border area and opened fire on civilians”.

“They saw that it was a civilian car, that civilians and children were sitting there, and opened fire. It is exactly such people who set themselves the task of depriving us of historical memory. They will achieve nothing, we will put the squeeze on them,” he said.

A video purporting to show members of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), which has its base in Ukraine, outside a neighborhood clinic has surfaced online.

In the video that was uploaded to Telegram, one armed man claims that they crossed into Russia.

The investigative journalism group Bellingcat Monitoring describes the RVC as “a unit officially formed last year made up primarily of anti-Putin, anti-Kremlin Russian far-right figures active in Ukraine”.

Commenting on the RVC claim, a Ukrainian military intelligence official, Andriy Yusov, said “these are people who are fighting with arms against the Putin regime and those who support him… Perhaps Russians are beginning to wake up, realise something and take some concrete steps”.

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