You're reading: Two Russian soldiers detained by Ukrainian border guards

Ukrainian border guards detained two Russian internal troops on Nov. 26 near the village of Milove in Luhansk Oblast, both of whom said they had “accidentally” crossed the border.


The men
were arrested on the border after they entered Ukrainian territory from Russia’s
village of Chertkovo, some 100 kilometers from the frontlines, on Nov. 26.

The next
day Vasily Panchenkov, a representative of Russia’s internal military forces,
told Russia’s state-run media the men had already been released back into
Russian custody. He said the men had accidentally entered Ukraine because they
had not seen any signs indicating their location and believed they were still
in Russia.

The men,
who were wearing insignia of Russian internal troops, offered the same
explanation to Ukrainian officials, saying their entry into Ukraine was
accidental, according to Oleh Slobodyan, a State Border Service spokesman. Both
of the detained Russian soldiers were unarmed, and had been serving in Moscow
Oblast. They were allegedly en route to the Russian town of Armavir in
Kransnodar Oblast “to pass exams for the right to wear a dark green beret,”
they explained, according to footage of their
questioning posted on YouTube.

Berets of a
certain color are a distinctive sign of special Russian military divisions. The
green beret is usually associated with reconnaissance units and is given only
after taking a test or winning an award.

This is not
the first time Russians have gotten “lost” in eastern Ukraine.

In early fall,
two Russians were arrested near Milove. One of them was a civilian with an
internal Russian passport, while the other had a military ticket proving he was
a Russian soldier from the Voronezh Oblast, Ukraine’s Border Guard Service said
in a statement published on Sept. 12.

Russian officials
claimed that the men had been abducted from Russia.

In May, two
officers of the Russian military intelligence unit known as the GRU – Yevgeny
Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov – were captured in Ukraine’s Luhansk Oblast
during an exchange of fire during a military operation.

Russian
officials said the two men were former soldiers who left the military before
they were captured.

Nearly
three months after a newly reached ceasefire, the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian
border remains relatively calm, according to Ukrainian military officials, as
no shelling was reported overnight on Nov. 27.

Meanwhile,
combined Russian-separatists forces opened fire on Ukrainian positions at least
14 times on Nov. 26. Ukraine-controlled villages of Kransnohorivka, Pisky and
Opytne in Donetsk Oblast remained hot spots. Numerous ceasefire violations,
namely bursts of small arms, light-infantry and light-anti-aircraft fire were
reported.

No
Ukrainian fighters were killed or wounded in the last 24 hours, according to
the Ukrainian military.

Monitors of
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe spotted the 45th Russian
convoy, comprised of 45 trucks, carrying what Russia claims is humanitarian aid
into the territory of Ukraine, but which Kyiv says also contain arms and other
supplies for the combined Russian-separatist forces.

According
to the monitors, the trucks returned back to Russia after a Ukrainian customs
officer and three border guards performed a visual check of the convoy from the
outside.

More than
8,000 people have been killed since a Kremlin-engineered armed uprising started
in Donbas in April 2014. Russia’s war against Ukraine has displaced more than
2.2 million people, of whom 1.5 million internally – the worst uprooting of
people in Europe since World War II.

Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be
reached at
[email protected].