Ukraine’s answer came fast, and it came with paperwork. After Russian officials said a Ukrainian drone had hit a bus carrying a Belarusian children’s football team in Bryansk Oblast, Kyiv not only denied it. A day later, the Security Service of Ukraine said it held a Russian document that pointed the other way.
The document, according to the SBU, came from Bryansk’s “Safe Region” monitoring center. It said no Ukrainian drones were detected in the area when the bus was hit. The SBU listed the Russian bodies named in it, among them a regional operations center, a radar unit at Suponyevo and Russia’s 32nd Division, and said none had recorded drone activity. It concluded the incident could be assessed as a Russian special services operation. Only the SBU has made that claim. The Kyiv Independent said it could not verify who was responsible, and RFE/RL could not confirm the reports from inside Russia.
What Russia and Belarus say
The incident happened on June 17. Acting Bryansk governor Yegor Kovalchuk said a woman was killed. He put the injured at six, four of them children. Belarusian Health Minister Alexander Khodzhaev gave a higher toll: eight hurt, six of them children, two seriously. The team was travelling from Gomel to the resort city of Gelendzhik, and Kovalchuk said the passengers would be returned to Belarus.
Belarus’ Foreign Ministry called the attack “yet another act of terrorism against the civilian population.” It demanded “comprehensive explanations” from Kyiv. The ministry also urged citizens to avoid conflict zones and nearby regions, children’s trips above all.
Alexander Lukashenko took up the Russian version on June 18, telling Belarusian military leaders the drone was Ukrainian, per state agency Belta. Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled opposition leader, took a different line. She asked for “full clarity” from an investigation.
Kyiv’s case
The General Staff said its forces “did not employ unmanned aerial vehicles against targets in Bryansk” at the time. It described the claim as a Kremlin information provocation, made by a country that is “unable to achieve its declared objectives on the battlefield and suffering significant losses.”
The staff also turned the accusation around. Russia, it said, “systematically violates the norms of international humanitarian law” by hitting Ukrainian cities, hospitals and schools. On the same day, according to RFE/RL, Russian attacks damaged a horse-riding school in the Sumy region and killed three horses. A worker there said some children arrived in tears despite being told to stay away.
Ukrainian drones do hit targets in Bryansk with some regularity. The General Staff said its forces damaged the Belets oil depot there on May 25. What nobody outside the two governments has shown is a drone over this bus.
Sources
- Ukraine denies Russian claim that Ukrainian drone struck bus carrying Belarusian children's football team
- Ukraine Denies Russian Claim of Drone Strike on Bus Carrying Belarusian Children
- Ukraine Denies Russian Claims Of Strike On Bus Carrying Belarusian Children
