Two Russian border guards were wounded in a shootout with saboteurs who entered the Bryansk region the day before, the ASTRA Telegram channel claims . According to his sources, lieutenant colonel Renat Ts. and ensign Andrey V. received shrapnel wounds and contusions. Both victims serve in the border department of the Federal Security Service of Russia in the Bryansk region.
ASTRA also reports that two civilians were killed during the events in the Bryansk region: 63-year-old Leonid Golovanov from the village of Klimovo, who was driving a Niva transporting children, and the driver of a VAZ 2107, whose identity has not been established. In addition, two people were injured: a 10-year-old boy from the village of Brakhlov and a 35-year-old resident of the village of Sushany.
Also on March 3, the FSB released a video that allegedly shows two vehicles fired upon in the Bryansk region. In the first frames, a car riddled with bullets is visible; a bloodied man, probably dead, lies motionless in the cabin. There is also a motionless person in the driver's seat of the second car, but there are no traces of bullets on the body of the car.
Earlier, State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein said that “during the cleansing of the territory” near the village of Sushany, a car of the National Guard was blown up by a mine. As a result, light shrapnel wounds were received by three soldiers of the Bryansk SOBR, including the commander, and the OMON explosives engineer. According to Khinshtein, the security forces cleared the village of Lubechane and cleared the territory of the village of Sushany. The deputy also published a photo, which, he claims, depicts one of the found mines.
On March 2, Russian pro-government media reported that Sushany, located near the Ukrainian border, was attacked by armed people and took dozens of villagers hostage (the information about the hostages was not confirmed later). The FSB said that employees of the department, as well as Russian military personnel, entered into battle with "armed Ukrainian nationalists who violated the state border." The governor of the Bryansk region, Alexander Bogomaz, said that a sabotage and reconnaissance group (DRG) from Ukraine entered the village of Lyubechane and fired at a car.
TASS later reported that the saboteurs had left the Bryansk region. Vladimir Putin called what happened in the region a terrorist attack. The Ukrainian authorities, represented by adviser to the Office of the President Mikhail Podolyak, stated that the information about “Ukrainian saboteurs” in the Bryansk region is a Russian provocation, and in reality, some Russian partisans could have carried out the attack.
Ultimately, the Russian Volunteer Corps claimed responsibility for the attack. This is a unit in which Russian emigrants are fighting on the side of Ukraine, many from the neo-Nazi environment. Representatives of the RDG stated that they did not kill anyone or take hostages, but only wanted to show their compatriots in Russia that it was possible to fight the regime.
Former State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev, who moved to Ukraine and received citizenship there, confirmed in a conversation with The Insider that RDK fighters had infiltrated the territory of the Bryansk region. “The commander of the RDK assured me that there were no attacks on civilians, there have not been and will not be. I have no reason not to believe him. I believe that if he says so, it is so. Any information that will be received on this topic should be perceived as a KGB provocation on the part of the Kremlin, ”Ponomarev said.