Russian President Vladimir Putin branded the saboteurs who entered Russia’s border region of Bryansk from the territory of Ukraine as "neo-Nazis" and "terrorists". A group of armed Ukrainian saboteurs crossed the border and attacked two villages in the Western region on Thursday morning, killing two people. According to experts interviewed by Izvestia, the primary goal of the attack was psychological warfare, and Russia will prepare a response.
The so-called Russian Volunteer Corps, a neo-Nazi group, claimed responsibility for the attack. The saboteurs’ attack was foiled - the Federal Security Service reported around 7:10 p.m. that the group was forced out of Bryansk region territory into Ukraine and was bombarded with massive artillery fire.
Attacks on Russian territory have intensified amid a lack of notable victories on the front lines recently, Vedomosti writes. Previously, there had been no reports of attacks by armed saboteurs, but for several days the authorities have been documenting strikes by UAVs in Russia's regions with varying degrees of success.
Advisor to the Office of the President of Ukraine Mykhailo Podolyak called the reports about the Ukrainian DRG in the Bryansk region a provocation by the Russian authorities:
“The story of Ukrainian DRGs in Russia is a classic provocation. Completely conscious. Russia wants to frighten its own people in order to somehow justify an attack on another country and growing poverty in a year of war.”
Earlier, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that it is not known whether the status of the special operation in Ukraine will change in connection with the developments in Bryansk or not.
92 THOUSAND FAMILIES AFFECTED BY EARTHQUAKE IN SYRIA
According to the emergency situation committee of the Syrian Government, about 92,000 families, namely 415,000 people, were affected by the February 6 earthquake. 4444 buildings and structures were completely or partially damaged. According to the report, 1,553 people were pulled out of the rubble.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the earthquake killed more than 7,200 people in the country, including more than 2,100 children.
In Turkey, according to the latest data, the number of victims exceeds 45,000. According to the Turkish Natural Disasters Office, after the devastating earthquake of February 6, new aftershocks are recorded in the country every 3 minutes, and more than 12,000 aftershocks have already been recorded.
ANGER, SORROW IN GREECE AS TRAIN CRASH DEATH TOLL RISES
Anger and sorrow grew in Greece on Thursday over a devastating train crash that killed dozens of passengers along with crew members near the central city of Larissa in the country's worst rail disaster, Reuters reports.
Carriages were thrown off the tracks, crushed and engulfed in flames when a high-speed passenger train with more than 350 people on board collided head-on with a freight train on Tuesday. They were on the same track.
As more bodies were recovered on Thursday, the number of dead rose to 57, among them university students returning home after a long holiday weekend. Scores were injured.
Outside the hospital in Larissa, where many of the victims were brought, a woman called Katerina, searching for her missing brother, a passenger on the train, screamed: "Murderers! Murderers! I will leave tomorrow with a coffin!"
Katerina, whose anger was directed at the government and the rail company, had, like other relatives looking for loved ones, given a DNA sample to try and identify her brother.
"Pain has turned into anger for the dozens of dead and wounded colleagues and fellow citizens," the railway workers' union said. The union launched a strike in protest that ground train services to a halt across the country on Thursday.
Hope of finding survivors amid the charred and buckled rail carriages which rescue workers were scouring through had diminished by Thursday morning.
"The most difficult moment is this one, where instead of saving lives we have to recover bodies," 40-year old rescuer Konstantinos Imanimidis told Reuters on the site of the crash, about 140 miles (230 km) north of Athens.
"Temperatures of 1,200 degrees and more in the carriages cannot allow for anyone to remain alive."
Nearby, two brothers were crying, with 33-year-old Sokratis Bozos saying they had come to the site of the crash in the hope of getting some news of their father, after the hospital could not tell them whether his body had been recovered.
HYPOTHESIS OF LABORATORY ORIGIN OF CORONAVIRUS IS REAL: BLINKEN
The novel coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic may have originated in a Chinese laboratory, but there is no evidence it was a bioweapon or intentionally released, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
“The bottom line is we don’t know conclusively, but the possibility that it originated in a lab is very clear and very real,” Blinken said during an interview with India Today.
“That’s also separate from the question of whether this had anything to do with a biological weapon and anything to do with intentional actions by a country to develop it, use it, release it.”
No US agency has found evidence of COVID-19 being released intentionally as a biological weapon, Blinken added. On Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the agency assesses that the COVID-19 pandemic “most likely” originated in a lab in Wuhan, China. Other intelligence agencies have tied the novel coronavirus to a market in Wuhan.
