Who are the pro-Ukrainian militias raiding Russia’s Belgorod region?

IN THE LATE afternoon of May 22nd footage emerged of two grinning pro-Ukrainian fighters in the midst of a cross-border raid into Russia. “The key to the border has been broken in half,” says one, quoting from “Everything is Going to Plan”, a cult anthem by Civil Defence, a Russian rock band. But the attack that the two men had helped engineer showed that, for Russia, things were very much not going to plan. It included: an illegal crossing from Ukraine into Belgorod, a Russian region on the border, by tanks and infantry fighting vehicles; the death of at least one border guard; farm buildings on fire; a downed helicopter; traffic jams of fleeing locals; and the reported evacuation of a nuclear-arms facility several kilometres into  Russian territory. Who was responsible for the incursion?

Members of two militias that oppose Vladimir Putin—the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Free Russia Legion—claimed to have “liberated” several border villages. The groups appear to be based in Ukraine, from where they mount their attacks. Russia says that the militias are a front for the Ukrainian military; Ukraine insists that they are Russian dissidents. The reality is somewhere in between. Both militias do indeed recruit disaffected Russian nationals. Both also co-ordinate their activities with HUR, Ukraine’s military-intelligence agency. Yet the groups have no formal connection to the Ukrainian government. That allows Ukrainian officials to distance themselves from the militias’ operations, however implausibly.