The Kremlin’s disproportionate response to the repeated attacks in its border region may be an attempt by the Russian military to “project confidence” ahead of an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said.
The Freedom of Russia Legion, a Russian anti-Kremlin militia that formed shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, has attacked villages in the Belgorod region twice in the past 10 days. The militia is made up of defectors from the Russian armed forces and Russian and Belarusian volunteers that have been fighting on Ukraine’s side.
The legion first entered Russian soil last week and claimed on its social media channels that it had “completely liberated” the settlement of Kozinka in Belgorod, alongside members of the Russian Volunteer Corps. On Thursday, the militia reported that its members had destroyed Russian military equipment after crossing into the border town of Shebekino.
According to Ilya Ponomarev, an exiled Russian politician who says he is the political representative for the legion, there are “active fights ongoing” in a suburb of Shebekino as of Friday.
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The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) said in a post to its Telegram account on Thursday, however, that its military had repelled the legion’s attempt to “carry out a terrorist act.” The militia was deemed a terrorist organization by the Russian Supreme Court in March.
The MoD also stated that it reinforced its border area within an hour of the start of the legion’s raid, and met the attack with heavy air fire and artillery. In total, the Russian ministry said, over 135 personnel and 35 vehicles responded to the raid.
“The MoD later celebrated the commander of an unspecified motorized rifle battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Nikitin, for leading the defensive effort, likely to preempt attempts to attribute the ‘victory’ achieved by Belgorod border defense on Russian Colonel General Alexander Lapin as the information space did during the May 23 raid,” the ISW noted in its assessment of the war in Ukraine released on Friday.
“The Russian MoD’s fixation on portraying Russian forces and the Russian military command as capable defenders of Russia likely reflects internal and broader information space anxiety over the coming Ukrainian counteroffensive as well as any reverberating informational impacts from any failures to defend against Ukrainian counterattacks,” the think tank added.
The attacks in Belgorod have also been used by Russian milbloggers to flame the ongoing tensions between the Kremlin and Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin. Prigozhin’s private mercenaries have played a key role in Russia’s ongoing raid of Ukraine, but the businessman recently began to split from his once-close ally Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As the ISW noted, some Wagner-affiliated bloggers have said that Russia “is not treating Belgorod Oblast like Russian territory and claimed that it is only adding to the list of settlements affected by Ukrainian shelling.” Other milbloggers, however, have praised Russia’s responses to the raids, with one writer “absurdly” claiming that Ukraine has decided to delay its counteroffensive “after observing Russia’s responses to recent probing efforts,” wrote the ISW.
Prigozhin previously blamed the Belgorod raids on Russian leadership, stating that the Kremlin had failed to protect the region and that “There is no governance, no desire, and no individuals who are ready to defend their country.”
Ukraine has been long-anticipated to launch a counteroffensive in the coming months in an attempt to reclaim Russian-occupied territory. Kyiv led a successful offensive campaign in the fall that retook key Ukrainian regions that had fallen to Russia at the beginning of the invasion in February 2022.
Ukrainian intelligence chief Major General Kyrylo Budanov recently teased that the start of his country’s counteroffensive is on the horizon, telling Japanese broadcaster NHK last week that “time cannot be wasted anymore.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian MoD via email for comment.
