Part of the strategy?
For some specialists, the blazes in Bryansk, affecting installations that send oil to Europe, were deliberate and linked to the war.
They add to a number of apparent shootings from helicopters or drones and obvious acts of sabotage once morest infrastructure in the Kursk and Belgorod oblasts, near the Ukrainian border.
“Nothing to confirm Ukrainian sabotage, other than the fact that most of the fires hit strategic or military targets“, explained Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Authorities in Belgorod and Kursk blamed the fires and destruction on saboteurs from Ukraine.
According to Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region, an April 1 attack on a fuel depot was the result “an airstrike by two helicopters of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which entered Russian territory at low altitude“.
Such attacks”certainly seem to be part of their strategy“, according to Phillips O’Brien.
Pentagon officials say Russian forces in Ukraine are hampered by weak supply chains and attacks on their infrastructure would further impact their war effort.
But US officials would not say whether further in Russia there is a sabotage campaign aimed at targets less directly linked to the invasion.
