A so-called partisan unit thought to be fighting on Ukraine’s side and possibly numbering dozens of team members is operating in remote woods and wetlands deep inside Russia and has attacked local security forces, Ukrainian and Russian news reports on Wednesday said.
Russian milblogger Vladimir Romanov was among the first to report that law enforcers in Russia’s western Bryansk region had located and attempted to cut off and hunt down a commando group in a remote area of the Vygonichky district.
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The fighters were part of a 100-personnel partisan unit deployed by Ukraine’s Special Operations Command (SSO) to carry out reconnaissance and sabotage missions deep behind Russian lines, Romanov and some other pro-Kremlin social media said.
Between the villages Subbotino and Myakishevo, on Tuesday, a 10-member commando group engaged local law enforcers in a possible ambush and then broke contact by retreating into nearby wetland, 40 kilometers (25 miles) inside Russia, some unconfirmed reports said. Other reports, equally unconfirmed, said Russian defense forces killed all the raiders.
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Authorities blocked access roads to the two villages and neighboring hamlets and erected highway checkpoints as part of a dragnet operation, the independent Astra news agency reported. A police lockdown on roads around the town of Vygonichi, 40 kilometers further north from the site of the possible firefight, was in effect, the Astra report said.
The officially sanctioned Posushano Klintsy local news platform reported that a Kyiv-loyal raider group appeared to be at large in the Vygonichi vicinity, but asserted authorities had the situation under control. A statement to readers said: “Maintain calm, don’t panic, trust reliable sources, don’t trust rumors!”
Bryansk regional governor Aleksandr Bogomaz, in a Tuesday evening official announcement, said that reports of Ukrainian saboteurs moving freely in his province were “just fake news” and said police had been dispatched to the Bryansk Forests region as a “prophylactic measure.”
In a Wednesday morning statement, Bogomaz’s office appeared to reverse that evaluation and confirmed police had deployed to the area to track down and contain a Ukrainian unit of unknown size using local forests and swamps as cover.
During an emergency meeting of the members of the Bryansk Regional Council on Thursday, Bogomaz told subordinates that Ukrainian cross-border raids were “nothing new,” and that the recent attack damaged communications infrastructure.
The Russian state has matters in hand, he reassured residents.
“Ukrainian units are deliberately trying to destroy Russian Federation state communications facilities, but the central government’s RTRS facilities, but the central government’s specialists, with the support of border guards, are trying to quickly eliminate all damage and ensure uninterrupted broadcasting,” Bogomaz said in comments published on his personal Telegram channel on Thursday.
Major Kremlin state-sanctioned military information platforms confirmed the presence of a commando group or groups in the Bryansk region, but several claimed it was not 100, but a dozen or fewer Ukrainian soldiers present in the region. The Kremlin-loyal “military correspondent” Yuriy Kotenok (360,000-plus followers) confirmed a shooting incident took place but, without citing sources, announced Russian troops had “the enemy” surrounded and the Ukrainians “will be eliminated.”
The popular pro-Moscow milblogger Dmitriy Korzin (1.2-plus million followers) said of reports of a big Ukrainian unit in the Bryansk Woods: “There have been many stupid rumors and this has led a ‘reinforcement’ to the numbers of commandos on the internet and in chat groups to almost 1,500 men… These rumors were actively inflated by Ukrainian propaganda using the tactic of a-grandmother-told-a-grandmother.”
Ukrainian mainstream media reported the probable presence of a commando unit operating in the Bryansk region, citing Russian sources. Ukrainian military statements for Thursday said Kyiv’s troops had been in action in the Bryansk region.
Conventional Ukrainian troops have occupied and defended a small enclave in the Bryansk region since April.
In fact, Ukrainian conventional units have advanced into Russia and captured ground repeatedly since the Kremlin’s Feb. 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The deepest penetration, in June 2024, advanced Ukrainian lines 25 km into Russia’s neighboring Kursk region.
Russia’s Bryansk Forests territory is deeply cut with rivers, streams and swamps, and is nearly roadless. A same-named Bryansk National Park, about 200 square kilometers (77 square miles), is at the center of the thickly wooded region. The landscape around the National Park is neither cultivated nor logged, so it’s generally impenetrable to all but individuals on foot, and covers a surrounding area of some 7,500 square kilometers (2,896 square miles), extending south into Ukraine.
During World War II, the region was the geographic heart of Soviet partisan resistance to German invasion and was never fully under German control.
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