As The Ukraine War Spills Into Russia, A Dangerous New Front Is About To Explode

At the start of this week, an unknown number of paramilitaries entered the Russian region of Belgorod from Ukraine

- MARY DEJEVSKY

The details are both unclear and contested, but what appears to have happened is essentially this: they took over a border post, attacked a few villages on the Russian side of the border north of Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, and advanced several dozen kilometres further into Russia before being beaten back by Russian troops. Russia claims they killed 70, but there is no corroboration.

Ukraine says it was a couple of Russian volunteer groups opposed to President Putin, operating independently of the Kyiv government; Russia says it was Ukrainian saboteurs and terrorists operating with the full knowledge and support of Kyiv. But whoever was behind this raid is a secondary detail to the fact that it happened.

There have been several attempted cross-border incursions in recent months, but this appears to have been the biggest, longest and best organised. Verified pictures also showed the group had been using US-made vehicles, such as Humvees, suggesting either a diversion or an authorised use of military aid.

Brief and apparently thwarted though it was, the raid adds to evidence that the war in Ukraine has started to spread into Russia proper. There have been drone attacks into border areas, targeting munitions dumps and other facilities. There have been a spate of reported derailments, including of long-distance freight trains, in Bryansk and other regions close to Ukraine.

There have been three political assassinations, or attempted assassinations, starting with the death of Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist ideologue; continuing with the St Petersburg based blogger who wrote as Vladlen Tatarsky, killed by a bomb concealed inside a statuette; and earlier this month the apparent attempt on the life of another nationalist writer, Zakhar Prilepin, in a car-bomb that killed his passenger and left Prilepin with serious injuries.