Russia claims it has completely destroyed pro-Kiev militias that crossed the border

Russia has claimed that its military has “completely exterminated” a pro-Ukraine militia that launched a two-day invasion of its territory, an embarrassing episode that added more than a year of widespread failures in President Vladimir Putin’s offensive. points towards.

With apparent ease two far-right groups of Ukrainian citizens based in Ukraine crossed into Russia’s border and temporarily “liberated” a village, prompting rare public criticism of local authorities, prompting the Kremlin to downplay concerns. inspired to.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a public broadcast on Wednesday that “Russia shut down nationalist groups and (then) beat (them) back to Ukrainian territory”, adding that “more than 70 Ukrainian terrorists were destroyed”. have been done” “. He vowed that Moscow would “react in a timely and extremely vicious manner to similar acts by Ukrainian militias in the future”.

A Ukrainian military intelligence official acknowledged Tuesday that they are cooperating with the groups involved in the attack, the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Free Russian Legion, which have claimed responsibility for the Belgorod intrusion and similar incidents this spring.

Ukraine has hailed the attacks as evidence of both anti-Putin insurgency among Russian citizens and Moscow’s weak control of border areas.

The Russian military has been willing to downplay the apparent shortcomings exposed in the attacks.

On Tuesday, bloggers close to the Defense Ministry released two videos showing Alexander Lapin, a senior Russian general and head of the army’s ground forces, urging a small group of soldiers: “Forward, for the Motherland! ” All he said down a village road was a fight against the militia.

But no signs of fighting were audible or visible in the clip, which was filmed 5 km from where the fighting took place, according to Russian independent news outlet Agentstvo.

The defense ministry also came in for rare criticism from Belgorod governor Viacheslav Gladkov in a late-night webcast after a local resident complained the border was “full of holes”.

Gladkov told the resident that he agreed and that he had “even more questions for the Ministry of Defense than you do”. “We need to draw conclusions from the mistakes that were made,” Gladkov said.

When asked about Gladkov’s comments, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that the war with Ukraine required “very difficult and stressful work” that “constantly creates questions being asked and answered”.

The regional governor’s voice added to growing criticism of the Russian Defense Ministry by hardliners surrounding Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner paramilitary group.

Russia’s forces are on the verge of capturing the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut – a symbolic victory after the army failed to make significant progress since the beginning of last summer.

But heavy losses of men and material from the invading forces in Bakhmut as well as failure to make progress elsewhere on the front lines have raised fears that Russia could find itself on the backfoot following the much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Prigozhin said in an interview released late Tuesday that about 15,000–16,000 of Wagner’s army, mostly criminals released from prison to fight in Ukraine, had died, many of whom had suffered serious injuries. .

These stark casualty figures are the largest admission by any senior Russian figure of Moscow’s losses during the conflict.

Prigozhin played a large role in Russia’s war effort as the regular army offensive continued.

Although Putin specifically thanked Wagner for his role in advancing through Bakhmut last week, Prigozhin is embroiled in a public conflict with the army’s leadership over which he deliberately starved the paramilitary forces of ammunition. alleges to possess.

In the interview, Prigozhin said that Russia’s military “broke the bed” during the initial invasion and claimed that “things are still not coming together” more than a year later.

The war “was done to discredit Ukraine, and we made them a world-famous nation”, Prigozhin said. “How did we demilitarize them? We have somehow militarized them. They have one of the strongest armies.

Prigozhin said that Russia needed to declare martial law, mobilize more men into the army, and divert all the resources of the economy towards producing war materials. “We’re at the point when we can fuck Russia,” he said.