Pro-Ukraine Fighters Behind Cross-Border Attack Pledge More to Come

Andrew E. Kramer and Evelina Riabenko / The New York Times

Members of the Free Russia Legion at a news conference in Northern Ukraine. (photo: Finbarr O'Reilly/New York Times)

Pro-Ukraine Fighters Behind Cross-Border Attack Pledge More to Come

Andrew E. Kramer and Evelina Riabenko / The New York Times

26 may 23

Fresh from leading a military incursion across Russia’s border, commanders of anti-Kremlin armed groups taunted the Russian Army on Wednesday for its slow response and threatened Moscow with more to come.

Russia, they told reporters at a news conference in a forest in northern Ukraine near the Russian border, should brace for further cross-border assaults, warning that any section of the frontier could be vulnerable.

By Wednesday, the incursion was over, the fighters said, and the news conference back in Ukraine seemed intended as a victory lap to highlight weaknesses in the Russian military and to try to shape the narrative of the fighting.