MOSCOW: Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday that Britain’s Special Boat Service had been operating in Ukraine and helping Ukrainian forces carry out attempted operations against Russian forces.
The Ukraine war has triggered the deepest crisis in Moscow’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. President Vladimir Putin has said that NATO military personnel are present already in Ukraine. The US and key European allies have said they have no plans to send ground troops to Ukraine.
The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said it had foiled a plan by British special forces to land Ukrainian sabotage soldiers on the Tendrov Split, a sandbar in the Black Sea. It said it had captured a senior Ukrainian naval special forces soldier, and gave his name and date of birth.
The FSB said the Ukrainian special forces unit was “supervised by a unit of the Special Boat Service (SBS) which indicates the direct involvement of Britain in the conflict.”
A spokesperson for Britain’s Defense Ministry had no immediate response to a Reuters request for comment.
The SBS is a special forces regiment of the British navy that traces its history to the early days of World War Two.
The SBS has served in some of the biggest conflicts of the past 70 years including the Korean War, Northern Ireland, the Falklands War, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Russia’s FSB says British special forces operating in Ukraine
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Russia’s FSB says British special forces operating in Ukraine
- The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said it had foiled a plan by British special forces to land Ukrainian sabotage soldiers on the Tendrov Split
- The Ukrainian special forces unit was “supervised by a unit of the SBS which indicates the direct involvement of Britain in the conflict“
Russia strikes power plant, kills four in Ukraine barrage
KHARKIV: Russia battered Ukraine with more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones early Tuesday, killing four people and pummelling another power plant, piling more pressure on Ukraine’s brittle energy system.
An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “several hundred thousand” households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defense systems.
“The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
“Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,” he added.
Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.
The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants over 220 times since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Daily attacks
Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid height of winter.
The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday’s bombardment included 25 missiles and 247 drones.
The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region’s main city, also called Kharkiv.
White helmeted emergency workers could be seen clambering through the still-smoking wreckage of a building occupied by postal company Nova Poshta, in a video posted by the regional prosecutor’s office.
Within Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.
The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including southern city Odesa.
Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Russia’s use last week of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war.”
Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.
