The twin offensives, three days before 114 million Russians are set to vote in a presidential poll expected to sweep Vladimir Putin to a third consecutive term, are being acknowledged as a widening indication of Kyiv's intention to hit back against Russia on its home territory.
Ukraine denied any involvement in the incursion by three Ukraine-based Russian paramilitary groups who claimed they were engaged in battles with Russian forces. The Free Russia Legion and Siberian Battalion circulated footage of their fighters in the Belgorod and Kursk regions.
"We will take our land from the regime centimeter by centimeter," the Free Russian Legion said in a post on social media.
The group also posted a video that showed its forces crossing the border with tanks and another of the destruction of a Russian armored vehicle in a border village.
The Kremlin said its forces successfully repelled the attackers and inflicted heavy losses, adding that the Federal Security Service had killed "100 enemy personnel" and destroyed six tanks, a Caesar self-propelled gun and 20 armored combat vehicles.
However, the BBC cited the Russian foreign intelligence service, the SVR, and an exiled Russian politician as saying two villages had been captured by "liberation forces."
Ukraine Military Intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov told Ukrainian TV that a third group, the Russian Volunteer Corps, was also involved in the offensive, but insisted that all three were operating independently of Ukraine authorities.
Russia's Defense Ministry said 25 drones had been intercepted and destroyed, but regional governors reported damage to petrochemical plants, including a blaze at a refinery in Nizhny Novgorod region almost 500 miles inside Russia.
Separately, the defense ministry said its air defenses had destroyed eight rockets and one Tochka-U missile over Belgorod region.
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