Dramatic footage has captured the moment Vladimir Putin used fighter jets to bomb his own territory in an attack on rebel fighters.
The tyrant leader’s armed forces struck Kozinka on Wednesday with glide bombs after it was taken over by rebel fighters who had vowed to ‘take our land back from [Putin’s] regime centimetre by centimetre’.
It was the first time Moscow’s armed forces have deliberately attacked a Russian border village in Belgorod – a region which has increasingly come under attack by pro-Ukrainian troops and incursions by Russian paramilitary partisans.
Following the brutal FAB-500 glide bomb attack there is reportedly not a single intact house left in Kozinka – which before the war had a population of 1,132.
Previously in the war, Putin’s planes have bombed Russian territory due to misfiring, but in this case the act was pinpoint targeted.
Footage shows for the first time the Russian armed forces deliberately bombing its own territory in a bid to halt an incursion by anti-Putin paramilitary fighters in Kozinka village, Belgorod region
Huge clouds of dust and smoke could be seen in the aftermath of the strikes
Putin’s armed forced carried out the brutal attack using FAB-500 glide bombs
Not a single house was left intact following the bombing of the village
A local woman told Dozhd TV channel that Kozinka was ‘practically destroyed’ due to the Russian bombing.
‘They dumped [the bombs] on residential buildings – and in most cases there are no houses.’
The huge force of Putin’s response was highlighted by Telegram channel BILD in Russian.
‘This video shows massive Russian airstrikes on… Russia,’ said analyst Julian Röpcke.
‘Although forces hostile to the regime captured only one street in the small village of Kozinka in the Belgorod region, Putin responded with brutal force, such as numerous FAB-500 glide bombs from fighter-bombers.’
Pro-Putin channel Two Majors said: ‘Several groups of enemy infantry have already been destroyed.
‘The fighting continues.’
The strikes came days after the Russian armed forces denied the presence of enemy forces in Kozinka and other villages across the border from Ukraine.
Pro-Putin governor of Belgorod region Vyacheslav Gladkov admitted the evacuation of civilians was underway but denied Ukrainian forces were on Russian territory.
‘I can say there are no Ukrainian troops on the territory of the region, the battle is taking place outside its borders,’ he claimed despite video evidence to the contrary.
‘But our Kozinka suffered greatly, the destruction was very serious.’
He claimed to have visited Kozinka and to have organised the evacuation of residents due to the cross-border attacks.
The savage blitzing of the village reflects Putin’s fury at the attacks on Belgorod regions by the Ukrainians and the partisan fighters.
This week he ordered his military to respond by hitting civilian targets in Ukraine – which his armed forces have anyway done during the war – and demanded his FSB hunt down and kill anti-Putin partisan fighters wherever they area.
Putin, 71, carried out the aerial bombing in the village, located in Belgorod – a region which is increasingly ravaged by Ukrainian attacks and incursions by Russian paramilitary partisans
The village was left devastated after the savage bombing
A Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) fighter pictured in Kozinka during their ongoing assault into Belgorod
Accusing his enemy of civilian strikes, he said: ‘We can respond in the same way.
‘[We can hit] civilian infrastructure and all other objects of this kind that the enemy attacks.’
Putin told FSB commanders: ‘These traitors, I ask you, as this has always been the case in our history, not to forget who they are, to reveal them by name.
‘We will punish them without a statute of limitations, wherever they are.’
The Russian armed forces said: ‘In the Belgorod direction, Russian units have completely cleared the settlement of Kozinka from the remnants of Ukrainian militants.’
Earlier this week, Gladkov announced an evacuation order to move 9,000 children away from areas closest to the Ukrainian border, where the paramilitaries have been active in shelling and cross-frontier forays.
Later evacuees will be sent to the region of Stavropol, including the kids from the city of Belgorod that has been under sustained fire in recent days.
The announcement came a day after the Russian president said the Kremlin wants to create a buffer zone to help protect border regions from long-range Ukrainian strikes and cross-border raids.
But the evacuation order – one of the biggest publicly announced in the Belgorod region since the war began in February 2022 – was a stark admission that despite the continual display of the strength of his armed forces, Putin is unable to properly defend a Russian region.
For days, the anti-kremlin groups have urged civilians to flee their homes ahead of what they called ‘massive strikes’.
It comes as Ukrainian capital Kyiv was attacked today, for the first time in 44 days.
Ukrainian air defence forces shot down ‘about three dozen enemy missiles, including ballistic missiles, over Kyiv and in the vicinity of the capital,’ the city’s military administration said on Telegram, adding that the raid had lasted three hours.
It said 10 people were wounded, including an 11-year-old girl and a 38-year-old man, with two taken to hospital.
Rocket fragments fell onto a kindergarten in the Sviatoshynskyi district of the capital, according to Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko, while an apartment building and a car caught fire in other areas of the city.
The attack comes after Ukraine has continuously attacked Russia’s Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine for several days.
A local woman told Dozhd TV channel that Kozinka was ‘practically destroyed’ due to the Russian bombing
An aerial view of Kozinka as it was targeted by Russian fighter bombers
Since Wednesday, the region has come under ‘massive strikes, including with the use of multiple rocket launcher systems,’ Gladkov said on Telegram, referring to a border district targeted by air attacks and ground incursions by armed groups from Ukraine.
Two people were killed there, and another man was killed in the regional capital, also called Belgorod, when shrapnel from a shelling attack hit his car, Gladkov said.
Three people were wounded in a Ukrainian attack on Tuesday in the Belgorod region, Gladkov added, including a 14-year-old who had part of a limb amputated. His mother was also seriously hurt in the attack, he said.
On Monday , four members of the same family died in an attack on the Belgorod village of Nikolskoe, according to Gladkov.
A grandmother, mother, her partner and 17-year-old son were killed after a missile struck their house, he said.
Kyiv has also escalated drone, rocket and artillery fire on the region over the last two weeks, in a wave of attacks launched in the lead-up to Russia’s presidential elections. Pro-Ukrainian paramilitaries have also attempted armed raids across the border.
Polling was suspended in Belgorod after it came under artillery fire, with clips circulated by Russian news channels on the Telegram messaging app showing trucks and cars blown to pieces by the shelling.
Election officials were seen wearing bulletproof gear as they monitored voting on the first day of the three-day election that saw Putin crowned victorious.
Partisan forces claimed ‘more than 7,000 civilian vehicles of residents of Belgorod and the Belgorod region’ heeded their call to evacuate.
In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to restore order to the border regions, as the fallout from his invasion continues to spill into Russian territory.
The Russian military ‘continue to take measures to prevent the penetration of sabotage and reconnaissance groups of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the border area’.
