By Galina Korol | 2024-04-01

KYIV -- Russians who have turned against the regime of Vladimir Putin are vowing to keep carrying the fight to their homeland, demonstrating the dictator's inability to defend his own territory.

After carrying out armed attacks in the Belgorod and Kursk border provinces of Russia that began March 12, the anti-Kremlin combatants held a news conference in Kyiv on March 21.

They shared video footage of heavily armed fighters crossing the border in a tank, firing on Russian army vehicles and troops and blowing up buildings.

"Our struggle continues," the fighters said in a statement. "Soon we will go to other cities."

"It's probably no exaggeration to say we've opened up a second front, taking full-scale military action into enemy territory," said Denis Nikitin, leader of one of the groups involved, the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK).

The RDK has teamed up with the Freedom of Russia Legion, which is seeking to recruit followers of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny. He died in a Russian prison February 16.

A third anti-Putin force of Russians is the recently created Siberian Battalion.

The insurgent raids forced Russia to divert troops from Ukraine to defend the border regions and pre-empted an advance timed to coincide with Russian elections, Nikitin and their allies said.

Humiliating invasion

On March 12, the Freedom of Russia Legion, the RDK and the Siberian Battalion launched a joint operation from Ukraine stormed into Belgorod and Kursk provinces in Russia.

As of March 18, Putin's army had suffered the following personnel losses in Belgorod and Kursk provinces, the Freedom of Russia Legion posted on Facebook: 613 troops killed, 829 wounded and 27 captured, plus more than 100 pieces of military equipment destroyed.

"The Russian liberation forces are destroying key targets on the outskirts of Zhuralevka one by one and consistently leaving Putin's troops without surveillance systems and communications equipment on the battlefield," the Freedom of Russia Legion wrote on Telegram March 19.

Ivan Stupak, a former officer in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and an analyst at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, told Kontur that he had initially underestimated the success of the paramilitary groups.

Initially he expected the anti-Putin forces to "create some mischief for a few hours, or maybe a couple of days, and then go home because they lacked forces and resources," Stupak said.

But things turned out quite differently, he added.

Serhiy Kuzan, a military analyst and chairman of the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation, called the incursion "a first-class performance."

In their pursuit of the insurgents, "the Russians are now essentially destroying their own villages with airpower and heavy artillery," said Kuzan.

On March 20, a video surfaced in the media showing Russian forces bombing a village in Belgorod province after the insurgents entered it.

Moscow's reaction

The Kremlin responded to the humiliation with lies and denial.

In an interview with propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov that appeared on the Kremlin website March 13, Putin said that nobody had breached the border and that the foe had suffered serious losses.

Putin stayed on that track for days.

Addressing the Federal Security Service (FSB) governing board two days after the Russian presidential election, Putin again said that the Russian soldiers had fended off all attempts by the insurgents to conduct an offensive.

He urged the FSB to track down Russians who are aiding sabotage and reconnaissance inside Russia.

"We will punish them with no statute of limitations, no matter where they are," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) quoted Putin as saying on March 19.

While Russians are fighting other Russians inside Russia, pro-Kremlin bloggers and commentators have begun discussing carve-out of a buffer zone in Ukraine, the BBC's Russian service reported on March 20.

"The buffer zone that will guarantee the security of the Russian Federation covers 400km [in length] ... It's not just Kharkiv but also Dnipro, Odesa, Mykolaiv and many other towns. It's important that there be no fighters from the Ukrainian army, their weapons or missile systems on this territory," the BBC quoted Victor Vodolatsky, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, as saying.

"This is how propagandists typically talk," Alexander Kovalenko, an Odesa-based military and political correspondent for the InfoResist news site, told Kontur.

"They squandered more than 100,000 men to capture Avdiivka, a little town. How many men do they need to reach the right bank of Kherson, capture Kherson, reach Mykolaiv province, capture Mykolaiv and then reach Odesa province and capture Odesa? A million, two million?"

All Russia can do now is "continue the terrorizing of Ukraine," Kovalenko said, "yet it's not controlling its own border."

Consequences for Russia

The pro-Ukraine fighters are creating "gray zones" inside Russia, said Kovalenko.

"It will be like a section of demilitarized zone that isn't controlled by Russian troops and as a result can't be used to fire on Ukrainian territory," Kovalenko said.

"In the long term if this gray zone expands ... the security zone for our borderland will also expand," Kovalenko told Kontur.

Ukraine would like to see two more outcomes, said Stupak.

"First, the towns are liberated one by one and the people from these towns start to side with the RDK and fight alongside it. The second thing we'd like to see is for the Russian General Staff to grasp that the Russian National Guard and local units are incapable of dealing with this problem, and then ... they'll pull their reserves from Kupyansk [in Ukraine]" to protect Russian territory, he said.

Such a deployment would drain Russia's ability to mount an offensive in Ukraine, he said.

"Russian commanders do not have a single concrete solution to the border problem," said Kovalenko.

Putin already has suffered a "loud slap in the face" from the insurgents, said Kuzan the military analyst.

"For an entire year Russia has been reinforcing the defense zone on that territory, and it completely botched the whole defense ... the West saw this humiliation of Putin," he said.

In addition, the fighting inside Russia shows the world that Putin is just bluffing about "red lines" that cannot be crossed, said Kuzan.