Sabotage group repelled in Belgorod, nukes unmoved in Grayvoron, Russians vulnerable in Bakhmut. What happened on the front line on May 23?

Financial Times correspondent Christopher Miller noted that he spoke with the head of the operation, and he was in a “pretty good mood,” which would be unusual if he had just lost 70 fighters.

The Russian Defense Ministry, meanwhile, published a video of the “liquidation of a Ukrainian sabotage group” in the Belgorod region. The footage, published by the MoD-controlled TV channel Zvezda, showed damaged military equipment and a burnt-out pickup truck with the inscription “For Bakhmut” (“Za Bakhmut”). VGTRK “military correspondent” Yevgeny Poddubny posted a video with the bodies of the fighters from the Ukrainian group on his Telegram channel. The footage depicts significantly fewer than 70 bodies.

The Russian Defense Ministry's report did not mention any casualties on the Russian side. Some pro-war channels reported on the killed and wounded from Russia’s territorial defense units. Sources cited by VGTRK's “war correspondent” Alexander Sladkov reported the same information.

The Ukraine-backed group may also have captured two armored personnel carriers – one BTR-82A and one BTR-80 – and taken at least one prisoner (according to the Telegram channel Dva Mayora, a Russian conscript manning a border checkpoint was taken prisoner).

Throughout the day, there were reports of attempts of new breakthroughs from the Ukrainian border in the area of Shchetinovka and Bogun-Gorodok. Belgorod Governor Gladkov denied the information.

If the goal of the breakthrough was to divert Russian forces from other sections, it may have been accomplished. A Novaya Gazeta Europe source reported that after the “intrusion of an AFU sabotage and reconnaissance group,” forces of motorized riflemen (about 3,200 servicemen and 20 vehicles) and Army special forces (about 1,000 servicemen and 40 vehicles) were deployed to the region. Employees of the Central Security Service of the FSB have also been sent to the region.

As mentioned in our previous reports, military base 25624, located in the vicinity of Grayvoron contains “Object 1150” (also known as Belgorod-22), which is under the jurisdiction of the 12th Main Directorate of Russia’s Ministry of Defense responsible for the storage of tactical nuclear weapons. The pro-Russian Telegram channel Rybar wrote that nuclear weapons have long been absent at the location, but Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andrei Yusov claimed that the Russians were urgently removing nuclear warheads from the area.

Pavel Podvig, a nuclear security expert at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, wrote that he is skeptical of reports of the weapons being transported, as it would be a visible operation that would be easily picked up by Western intelligence agencies monitoring Russian nuclear weapons – the operation would have to involve a convoy of trucks with multiple guards, as well as other personnel and equipment.

Podvig pointed out that Belgorod-22 is a so-called “national-level” storage facility that is some distance from the “base-level” storage facilities serving operational units. It has six large bunkers, meaning at least a dozen items of “special ammunition” can be stored there.