Mykhailo Podolyak and Ukraine’s military intelligence comment on events in Belgorod region, as casualty count rises

Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reports that three people were injured and had to be hospitalized as a result of shelling in Grayvoron, a town in the Belgorod region.

According to the Telegram news outlet Baza, the deputy head of the town’s municipal administration and two emergency workers were wounded in the attack that damaged the town hall and three other buildings nearby.

Earlier on Monday, Gladkov wrote of two other people (a man and a woman) who had been hospitalized with torn wounds from explosions after the shelling of Glotovo, a village in the Grayvoron district of the Belgorod region. Another woman was injured in the fire that broke out in a daycare center in the nearby village of Zamostye after a projectile struck the building.

The Kremlin is attributing the events in the Belgorod region to armed sabotage by a Ukrainian military grouping.

President Zelensky’s communications advisor Mykhailo Podolyak says that Ukraine is monitoring the developing situation on the Russian side of the border, but has not direct part in it.

“The only real political power in an airtight totalitarian state will inevitably devolve to armed partisan movements,” Podolyak tweeted, commenting on the incursion. “Everybody knows you can buy a tank at any Russian army supply store, but underground partisan units are nevertheless made up of Russian citizens,” he concluded.

Update: The Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps have taken credit for the incursion into the Belgorod region. The two armed formations are fighting on the side of Ukraine in the war with Russia. Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) has confirmed that these two formations have entered Russian territory, describing them as “anti-government Russian nationals who are ready for armed confrontation with Putin’s criminal regime.”