“We can easily cross the border to Russia” The balloon affair does not fit into the concept in either China or the US

Oleksiy and his two younger comrades-in-arms, Wladyslaw and Taras, learned through Russian telegram channels at the end of December how dangerous their missions are. There, photos of four dead bodies in camouflage suits appeared in the snow, in a pine forest near the Ukrainian border in the Bryansk region of Russia. The FSB secret service said the four Ukrainians had been on a “terrorist and sabotage mission” – and were exceptionally close to the truth.

“We were all shocked, they were our best fighters,” Oleksiy told The Guardian, whose reporter met the trio in Kiev. It is unclear how her four colleagues died, their bodies have not yet been transferred. Oleksiy suspects that they have run into a minefield. Like them, he belongs to a Ukrainian volunteer unit that specializes in acts of sabotage in Russia.

Saboteurs send message to Moscow

The “Battailon Brattwo” kidnapped Kremlin henchmen, shot down helicopters and blew up military facilities – in collaboration with the Ukrainian army, but not on their behalf, Oleksiy explains. According to his own statements, he comes from the secret service industry, in which secrecy is actually the highest priority. But the saboteurs always want to send a message with their covert actions: “We can easily cross the border into Russia,” says Wladyslaw in a nutshell. At 21 years old, he is the youngest in Oleksij’s group. Your probably most successful mission to date has only been a few weeks.

“We fired on a helicopter four kilometers away from a mobile rocket launcher,” says 23-year-old Taras. “Because of the distance, we did not see the explosion, but we heard it.” According to Taras, senior officials of the Russian Interior Ministry were in the helicopter. They marched across Russia on foot for a day and slept on the spot. “At 9 a.m., we heard the helicopter,” says Taras. To escape faster, they would have left the rocket launcher in place.

“These attacks demoralize the enemy”

Things went less smoothly when the group had to kidnap or kill an FSB agent operating on the Russian side near the Ukrainian border. “We knew the man’s routes and decided to ambush him,” Wladyslaw reports. They lay in wait by the side of the road for hours, but the FSB officer’s car never showed up.

At daybreak they are said to have ceased the action. Back at the border, they encountered four Russian soldiers: “We attacked, killed three and wounded one,” recalled Wladyslaw. They took the wounded soldier to Ukraine, and one of their men was also shot in the arm.

However, Oleksiy, Wladyslaw and Taras do not see the move as a failure: “We have shown that we can penetrate Russia, that Ukrainians are capable of action,” says Taras. After each act of sabotage, the Russians would have to send soldiers again to find them. “These attacks demoralize the enemy. The mere fact that Ukrainian saboteurs are hunting down Russian officials makes the Kremlin leadership nervous.”

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(t online)