How Russian rebels’ Belgorod incursion could play a huge role in Ukraine war

The daring attacks by native Russian anti-Kremlin fighters on western Russia’s Belgorod region could “ram” Moscow and disrupt Russian forces in anticipation of a long-awaited Ukrainian counterattack, experts say.

The Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC) and the Freedom Legion of Russia, armed with armored vehicles, small arms and a few tanks, stormed across the border from Ukraine’s Kharkiv region late on Sunday, taking a series of urban settlements to occupy about 5 to 5 miles from Russian soil.

They later launched a pair of drone strikes on FSB and Interior Ministry buildings in the city of Belgorod on Tuesday night, prompting regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov to order the evacuation of nine Russian cities and the Kremlin to admit ‘serious cause for concern’.

On Tuesday afternoon, Russia’s defense ministry claimed it had “wiped out” the rebels, refusing to recognize them as Russian and instead describing them as Ukrainian nationalists.

But there was no immediate independent confirmation that the fighting had ended, with the groups stating that they were still occupying any particular area and had not been pushed back.

Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, replied that they were not involved in the orchestration of the raid, claiming that the attack was carried out by Russian civilians and that it was a domestic, internal Russian struggle.

Experts believe the attacks on Russian soil could prove useful in disrupting Putin’s troop deployment and forcing his military commanders to question the positioning of their border fortifications further south, thereby expanding their defenses.

“The Ukrainians are trying to pull the Russians in different directions to open holes. The Russians are being forced to send in reinforcements,” said Neil Melvin, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

“They’re going to have to respond to this and put troops there and then have a lot of troops all along the border area, even though that may not be the way the Ukrainians come,” Melvin said.

John Kennedy, a defense and security research leader at RAND Europe, told MailOnline: ‘[The attacks on Russian soil] represent an important new dimension to the conflict – and in particular the prospect of a capable anti-Kremlin insurgency operating in Russia.

“Not only will they determine the course of the war in Ukraine, but it goes without saying that if such attacks continue, the Russian army will have to continue to respond.”

And Mark Galeotti, head of the London-based intelligence agency Mayak, agreed that the incursion would force Russia to respond, but added that the strikes could act as an operation to shape the Ukrainian battlefield ahead of the much-anticipated Kiev counteroffensive.

“This is really an opportunity to do two things. One is to turn the Russians upside down, make them concerned about the possibility of uprisings among their own people.

“But second, force the Russians to disperse their troops,” he said.

However, the analysts warned that armed attacks on Russian soil would provide Kremlin spin doctors with more ammunition to twist the narrative of the conflict in their favor and gain an advantage in the information war.

The Kremlin described the insurgents as “Ukrainian nationalists” – and Putin declared on the first day of the war in Ukraine that his “special military operation” aimed to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine.

Meanwhile, a range of his defense chiefs, government officials and state-controlled media personalities have echoed Putin’s claims that Ukraine is just a puppet of the West.

John Kennedy told MailOnline that every fight on Russian soil plays a part in Putin’s narrative justifying his war in Ukraine.

“We should expect Russia to use these raids to claim that its territory is under threat,” he said.

“This is not new: Russia justified its invasion – and repeated threats to NATO in the course of the war – by falsely claiming that it is under attack from the West.”

The Kremlin has been quick to act on signs of dissent within its borders.

It appointed Colonel General Alexander Lapin, 59, as commander of Russian forces in Belgorod to deal with the rebel threat.

Lapin posed for videos in the Belgorod region yesterday, standing next to armored vehicles and yelling orders. But his abilities as a commander have been questioned and he has been blamed for Russia’s withdrawal from the Ukrainian town of Lyman earlier in the war.

On Tuesday, Russia’s defense ministry declared the “Ukrainian nationalists” had been liquidated and released a series of images allegedly showing the bodies of some rebels and damaged armored vehicles.

But both the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps disputed claims that they had been eliminated.

“This is the Legion’s first operation on the territory of Russia and the scope of our actions will only increase in the future,” a Freedom of Russia representative wrote on social media.

Alexei Baranovsky, a spokesman for the political wing of the Freedom Legion of Russia, denied heavy losses and dismissed Russian reports of large losses as disinformation.

He said the unit was part of the Ukrainian International Legion and thus part of its armed forces, but denied that the raid was coordinated with Ukrainian authorities.

“These are the first steps towards the main goal of overthrowing Putin’s regime by armed force. There are no other alternatives,” he said.

Kennedy concluded that the Kremlin’s insistence that they wiped out the rebel attack—and its refusal to recognize the participants as Russian—was part of an overarching plan to sow disinformation and mistrust, describing the attacks as “politically significant.”

Russia has claimed that the participants are Ukrainian nationalists, while Ukraine – and the participants themselves – have claimed that they are Russian rebels.

‘In that respect, the facts themselves are already being disputed within the information war.

“We can expect Russia to further muddy the waters — as we’ve seen during Putin’s tenure, the Kremlin’s goal is to create the impression that there isn’t a single truth about any event.”

Melvin added that the Russian rebels’ operation also served to boost morale in Ukraine, with Kiev officials taking the opportunity to emulate the rhetoric used by the Kremlin when the Russians annexed Crimea in 2014.

Podolyak blamed the Belgorod raid on “underground guerrilla groups” made up of Russian civilians, saying “As you know, tanks are sold in every Russian military store” — a nod to a 2014 quote from Putin when asked about the presence of men carrying Russian military men. uniforms without insignia in Crimea.

“You can go to a store and buy any kind of uniform,” the Russian president said at the time.

Ukrainian citizens, meanwhile, took to social media to mock the Russian Defense Ministry and proclaim the Russian rebels leaders of the “People’s Republic of Belgorod” – a nod to the events in eastern Ukraine in 2014, when Russian-backed militias proclaimed ‘people’s republics’ in Ukrainian Donetsk. and Luhansk regions.