Alberto Rojas

Updated Tuesday, March 12, 2024-12:27

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Several armored columns of three groups of Russian insurgent volunteers

have penetrated from Ukraine into Russian territory

early this Tuesday morning.

Divided into three attack wedges from the Kharkiv region, they have overcome the border barriers of the Belgorod and Kursk oblasts.

Russia has had to put its air force into the air to try to plug the gap and several helicopters were flying over the area in search of the armored vehicles that, according to some sources,

have already arrived in the town of Shebekino

, on the route to the city of Belgorod. .

From this city the explosions of nearby combat were audible.

The Kremlin denies that these groups are already fighting in Russia, but several videos show the opposite: in one of them, Ukrainians

fight in the streets of Tetkino (Kursk)

while a Russian armored vehicle burns.

This incursion, the second of this magnitude so far in the war, has a very limited military importance in the total development of the invasion, but on the other hand it has a political derivative that is relevant, especially

three days before the polls are placed.

to stage that Putin retains power.

Since the beginning of the war, Ukraine has opened its army to Russian volunteers who wanted to fight Vladimir Putin's regime.

These soldiers of fortune include well-known neo-fascists such as Denis Nikitin, commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps, some communist opponents in the Russian Freedom Legion and even citizens from the republics of Transural, Siberia and the Far North

in the so-called Siberian Battalion

.

Despite their differences, they all fight together, united by their hatred of Putin's regime.

Ranged attacks

It is still early to know the true extent of this attack, but this offensive occurs at the same time as dozens of Ukrainian-made drones attack energy plants throughout Russia, and that is relevant.

Tonight one of these drones

hit the Nizhny Novgorod refinery

, 800 kilometers from the border with Ukraine, the second largest facility of this type in Russia and the first of the Lukoil company.

This plant, which has suffered significant damage as a result of the attack, refined 5% of all Russian oil and supplied the Z troops.

Other Ukrainian drones hit other plants in Moscow, Tula, Voronezh and Belgorod.

For a few weeks now, these Ukrainian bombings, a logical response to those that Russia launched against Ukraine from the beginning of the invasion,

are causing enormous damage to the hydrocarbon industry

, the cornerstone of the Russian economy.

It has not been, even in the air, a good morning for Russia.

An IL-76 troop transport plane plummeted before reaching its base north of Moscow.