Ukrainian Security Council Official Calls Attack on Bus Carrying Belarusian Children in Bryansk Region a Russian “Provocation”

Andrii Kovalenko, head of the Centre for Countering Disinformation at Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said the incident involving the bus in Russia’s Bryansk Region was an information provocation by Russia.

According to him, the Russian side saw that Belarusians were unwilling to support Moscow’s aggressive rhetoric toward Ukraine and therefore fabricated a “terrorist attack on a bus carrying Belarusian children” in an attempt to encourage Belarusian public support for aggressive actions against Ukraine.

“The Russians saw that Belarusians do not want to support Russia’s aggressive rhetoric toward Ukraine and invented a ‘terrorist attack on a bus carrying Belarusian children in Bryansk Region’, hoping that this information provocation would push Belarusian society to support aggressive actions against Ukraine. The provocation itself is pathetic and bears all the hallmarks of a coordinated operation without any factual evidence. Typical of Russian propagandists,” he wrote on Telegram.

As previously reported, a bus carrying 28 children from the football team of Rechytsa Youth Sports School No. 2 came under a drone strike in Bryansk Region on June 17. The Russian Investigative Committee said the drone was Ukrainian. The coach’s wife, who was accompanying the team, was killed in the strike. Eight people, including six children, were injured.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has denied using drones in Bryansk Region at the time of the attack. Ukrainian military officials also described reports that a Ukrainian drone struck the bus as a provocation.