Shootings erupted at two checkpoints on the Russian-Ukrainian border Friday, regional authorities said as Russia’s military offensive on Ukraine continues to spill into its own territory.
“It was a restless morning in the border district of Rylsky,” Kursk region Governor Roman Starovoit said on social media.
“Mortars were fired at a checkpoint in the village of Krupets at about 8:00 a.m. Retaliatory fire from our border guards and military crushed the firing point,” he added.
There were no casualties or damages, Starovoit said.
Hours later, the governor of the neighboring Bryansk region said a Federal Security Service (FSB) border guard post also “came under mortar fire from Ukrainian territory.”
“Water and electricity supply networks were damaged [but] the work to restore them has been carried out,” Bryansk region Governor Alexander Bogomaz said. “A tree also fell on a cemetery as a result of the shooting.”
Kursk and Bryansk are among several regions near the Russia-Ukraine border to have raised their “terror” threat levels in recent weeks.
Ukrainian leaders have neither confirmed nor denied the shelling and strikes on Russian infrastructure, military targets and villages.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has stopped short of claiming responsibility for the attacks, only saying that fuel and weapons storage fires in Russia were “an absolutely natural process.”
The Washington Post estimates there have been at least 11 hits on Russian territory since Moscow invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, most of them occurring late last week.
The Russian military threatened this month to strike Kyiv’s “command centers” in retaliation to the cross-border attacks it blamed on the Ukrainian forces.
Aviation authorities on Friday extended flight bans for 11 southern Russian airports, including the Kursk and Bryansk airports, until May 7.
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