RUSSIAN officials accused Ukraine yesterday of sending saboteurs across the border and attacking local villages in the Bryansk region.

Ukraine denied the accusations, calling them a “deliberate provocation”. It said Russia might be seeking an excuse to intensify its assault on its neighbour.

The exact circumstances of the incident remain unclear.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the attack was carried out by Ukrainian “terrorists,” claiming that they deliberately targeted civilians.

Mr Putin said: “It was yet another terror attack, another crime.

“They infiltrated the area near the border and opened fire on civilians.”

President Putin said the attack in the Bryansk region, which he blamed on neonazis, justified Russia’s invasion just over a year ago.

Neonazi groups such as the Azov Battalion have fought with the Ukrainian army against Donbass separatists since 2014, and “de-Nazification” joined demilitarisation and “de-communisation” — thought to be a reference to redrawing Ukraine’s existing, Soviet-derived borders – as Russia’s three stated war aims.

Top diplomats from the Group of 20 industrialised and developing nations ended their meeting in New Delhi yesterday without reaching a consensus over a statement on the war in Ukraine.

Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said there were “divergences” on the issue “which we could not reconcile as various parties held differing views.”

China and Russia objected to text taken from last year’s G20 declaration in Bali, which said the war in Ukraine was causing immense human suffering while exacerbating fragilities in the global economy.

In the first high-level meeting in months between the two countries, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reportedly talked for around 10 minutes on the sidelines of the conference.