Amid fighting between Kyiv forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, a shell fired from Ukrainian territory on Monday destroyed a structure at a Russian border crossing without causing any casualties, security services charged Russian. But Ukraine has denied being the cause.
A shell fired from Ukrainian territory on Monday destroyed a structure at a Russian border crossing without causing any casualties, Russian security services accused, amid fighting between Kiev forces and pro-Russian separatists in the east. “On February 21, at 9:50 a.m. (6:50 GMT), a shell of an unidentified type fired from the territory of Ukraine completely destroyed the point of border guards in the Rostov region, at a distance of about 150 meters from Russian-Ukrainian border,” the FSB said, quoted by Russian news agencies.
However, an hour after the announcement, a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine on Monday denied any artillery fire on a Russian border post in the Rostov sector, and mentioned a act of Russian disinformation. “We can’t stop them from producing this false information (…) but we insist that we are not shooting at any civilian infrastructure or the Rostov region” in Russia, Pavlo Kovalchuk told AFP. adding that “there is no artillery fire on the Russian occupation forces”.
No casualties have been identified
“There were no casualties, deminers are working on the site,” added the FSB, which also has the border guard service in charge in Russia. A video attributed to the FSB and released by the state agency Ria Novosti shows a small gutted building in the middle of a wooded plain, rubble strewn across the ground. Fighting between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists backed by Moscow has intensified for three days in eastern Ukraine, a region located on the southwestern border of Russia.
Moscow is accused of having massed 150,000 troops at the borders for a potential invasion of its neighbor. Westerners believed that Russia was looking for a casus belli to justify an attack and that the worsening fighting in the East could be this pretext. Kiev and pro-Russian separatists have been fighting each other since 2014 in a war that has claimed more than 14,000 lives. This is not the first time that Ukrainian shells have fallen on Russian territory.