Published on •Updated
A bus carrying a children’s football team from Belarus in Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders both Ukraine and Belarus, was hit by a drone on Wednesday, according to Russian officials.
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Local authorities said a woman who accompanied the team was killed. Russia’s healthcare ministry reported that seven people, including five children, have been wounded.
Moscow immediately blamed Ukraine for what it claimed was a Ukrainian drone strike.
Photos from a Belarusian TV channel showed a gray bus with shrapnel holes on one side, with some of the windows blown out.
The Belarusian foreign ministry called the strike “another act of terrorism against civilians” and demanded “exhaustive explanations” from Kyiv.
Bryansk region acting governor Yegor Kovalchuk said on social media that the children were traveling from Gomel in southeast Belarus, close to the border with Russia and Ukraine, to Gelendzhik on Russia’s Black Sea coast.
Ukraine’s army dismissed the Russian statements as false.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement that “during the specified period, the Defense Forces of Ukraine did not employ unmanned aerial vehicles against targets in Bryansk region”.
Kyiv insists it regards “such reports as yet another information provocation orchestrated by the Kremlin.”
“Unable to achieve its declared objectives on the battlefield and suffering significant losses, the Russian Federation is increasingly resorting to information manipulation and the fabrication of accusations against Ukraine,” the general staff said.
Belarus, which borders Ukraine and the countries of NATO’s eastern flank, is closely allied with Russia. Minsk has had tense relations with Kyiv ever since Moscow used its territory as a launching pad for the 2022 full-scale invasion.