Russian invasion
Russian paramilitaries: planning operations in the border area
A car drives past a road sign damaged by bullets and shrapnel on the road to the Russian city of Belgorod. photo
© Vadim Ghirda/AP/dpa
After attacks in May and June, the “Legion Freedom of Russia” is planning several missions, according to a spokesman.
The paramilitary Russian volunteer battalion “Legion Freedom “There will be another surprise in the coming month or so,” said Maximillian Andronnikov, who calls himself Caesar, in an interview with Britain’s Sunday newspaper The Observer.
“This will be our third mission,” he said. After that there will be a fourth and a fifth. “We have ambitious plans. We want to liberate our entire area,” the spokesman continued. The “Legion of Freedom of Russia” consists of Russian nationalists who are currently fighting on the side of Ukraine.
Already in May and June, fighters of the “Legion” together with the “Russian Volunteer Corps” took part in attacks in the Russian border region of Belgorod near Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian secret service, such operations are intended, among other things, to “liberate the area from the so-called Putin regime”. The government in Kiev stressed that it had nothing to do with the attacks.
Andronnikov sees Russian President Vladimir Putin as weakened after the halted uprising of the Wagner group led by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin at the end of June. According to the Observer, he expects Putin’s government to collapse by the end of 2024. There is dissatisfaction in the Russian army because many soldiers who have joined the military for financial reasons have not been paid: “There is a huge money problem. “