Is Ukraine conducting a sabotage campaign inside Russia?

In Tver, northwest of Moscow, a deadly fire broke out at an aeronautical research institute. A munitions plant in Perm, more than 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) to the east, has caught fire again. There were also fires in two different oil facilities in Bryansk, Belarus.

Coincidences, or a clue that Ukrainians or their allies are waging a sabotage campaign within Russia to retaliate for Russia’s invasion of their country?

Since the April 21 fire at the Central Research Institute of the Aerospace Defense Forces in Tver, which killed at least 17 people, social media has jumped on every story of a fire in Russia — especially at a sensitive location — as proof that the country is under covert attack.

No one is claiming responsibility, but analysts say at least some of the incidents, particularly those in Bryansk, point to a possible effort by Kyiv to bring the war to their invaders.

In a post on Telegram, Mykhaylo Podolyak, a senior advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, called the fires “divine intervention.”

“Large fuel depots periodically burn… for different reasons,” he wrote. “Karma is a cruel thing.”

– ‘We don’t deny’ –

A fire in a distant factory or facility in a huge country like Russia would normally not raise many eyebrows.

However, since Russian forces entered Ukraine on February 24, more than a dozen fires reported by war photographers have gotten a lot of attention on social media, raising worries that the Ukrainians are waging a coordinated campaign of arson terror.

Even flames in Russia’s far east, at an airport north of Vladivostok and a coal factory on Sakhalin, sparked concerns late last month.

A major inferno struck a chemicals company in Dzerzhinsk, east of Moscow, on Wednesday.

“Russian saboteurs against Putin continue their heroic work,” said Igor Sushko, a Ukrainian racecar driver who regularly posts photos and videos on Twitter of alleged acts of sabotage inside Russia — but offers no proof they were deliberate.

Another Zelensky advisor, Oleksiy Arestovych, was equally opaque to The New York Times, noting that Israel never admits its covert attacks and assassinations.

“We don’t confirm, and we don’t deny,” he said.

– Part of the strategy? –
War analysts believe the infernos in Bryansk, which hit facilities sending oil to Europe, were deliberate and tied to the war.

The anonymous analysts behind “Ukraine Weapons Tracker,” a Twitter account that posts detailed accounts with supporting videos of attacks by both sides, said they received “reliable” information that the Bryansk fires were the result of attacks by Ukrainian Bayraktar drones.

“If accurate, then this story again shows the ability of Ukrainian forces to conduct strikes in Russian territory using long-range assets,” they wrote.

“I think it was probably a Ukrainian attack, but we cannot be certain,” Rob Lee, another war analyst, told The Guardian.

A number of apparent helicopter and drone shellings, as well as apparent acts of sabotage against infrastructure in Kursk and Belgorod Oblasts near the Ukrainian border, have been added to the mix.

The governors of Belgorod and Kursk have both blamed saboteurs and assailants from Ukraine for the fires and destruction of infrastructure such as railway bridges.

An April 1 attack on a Belgorod fuel depot, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on his Telegram channel, was the result of “an air strike from two helicopters of the armed forces of Ukraine, which entered the territory of Russia at a low altitude.”

“Nothing that would confirm Ukrainian sabotage, except for the fact that many of the fires seemed to hit strategic/military targets,” said Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.

He added such strikes “definitely appear to be a part of their strategy.”

Russian soldiers inside Ukraine are hampered by weak supply systems, according to Pentagon officials, and attacks on their infrastructure would exacerbate the situation.

However, US officials refused to say whether a sabotage campaign targeting targets unrelated to the invasion is underway deeper within Russia.