A few days before the Russian presidential election, which will take place next weekend, the Ukrainian forces seem to have decided to play a role, in their own way, by forcing the Russian army to fight, on the very territory of the Russian Federation. Today, Russian fighters allied with Ukraine called on the population to leave the cities of Kursk and Belgorod, in order to avoid civilian casualties.
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With our correspondent in kyiv, Stéphane Siohan
Since Tuesday, March 12, three groups of Russian volunteers, the Russian Freedom Legion, the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Siberian Battalion, appear to have engaged in combat with Russian police forces and soldiers, in the Kursk region, where Russian opposition volunteers say they have taken control of the small border town of Tyotkino.
It is difficult to independently verify the extent of these combats, but several videos attest to the passage into Russia of armed groups and armored vehicles, while on Tuesday, a Ukrainian drone fell on the town hall of Belgorod, the other Russian regional border capital. In the spring of 2023, these Russian groups, notoriously coordinated by Ukrainian military intelligence, had already attempted incursions into Russia.
This Wednesday morning, Denis Nikitin, one of the commanders of the Russian Volunteer Corps, a nationalist formation, declared in an interview that the objective of the current operations was to prevent the holding of the Russian presidential election in the border regions with the Ukraine, to discredit this election aimed at relegitimizing Vladimir Putin.
For the second night in a row, Ukraine also carried out a massive wave of drone bombings of Russian refineries. These attacks took place in five Russian regions during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, partially shutting down production at certain refineries. Another way to put pressure on the Kremlin before the poll this weekend.
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