KYIV OUTSKIRTS

Ukrainians hunt Russian saboteurs

AFP, Irpin

The Ukrainian special forces commander inspected the remains of a bridge his teams had blown up at the gates of Kyiv and explained his strategy for fighting Russian “saboteurs”.

“We have our agents living with the locals,” Spear unit commander Viktor Chelovan said. “If strangers come into our villages, people send us signals, call us, and we go out and take care of these saboteurs.”

A fear of Russians disguised as locals is gradually gripping Ukraine. It crept into Kyiv when Russian paratroopers dropped into a local airfield on the northwestern edge of the city in the first hours of their invasion of Ukraine last Thursday.

The precise number who landed is unclear. But residents of the neighbouring village of Irpin have been reporting strange things in their woods ever since.

“We have people who look like locals shooting at other locals,” said Irpin resident Levanchuk.

Mykola Beleskov of Kyiv’s National Institute for Strategic Studies said Russia was “employing special forces of different kinds en masse” to try and capture the Ukrainian capital.