MOSCOW. March 2 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the events that happened in Russia's Bryansk region on Thursday as a terror attack.
While speaking at the opening ceremony of the Year of the Teacher and Mentor by video link, Putin described those events as "yet another terror attack, another crime."
"They infiltrated the neighboring territory and opened fire at civilians. They saw it was a civilian vehicle, they saw there were civilians, children, inside. It was an ordinary Niva," Putin said.
"That's exactly the kind of people aimed at depriving us of historical memory, our history, our traditions and language," he said.
Putin quoted celebrated pedagogue Konstantin Ushinsky as describing "attempts to take away the language of the people, to cut off the strongest bond that connects generations into one great historical living being as intolerable violence."
"This is violence, a real crime perpetrated by the neo-Nazis I have just mentioned and their masters. I have no doubt that these masters will not even remember today's crime [in the Bryansk region], no one will even pay attention to that," Putin said.
"Yet again, they will achieve nothing and we will bring them down," he said.
The Federal Security Service said earlier on Thursday that measures were being taken in a border district of the Bryansk region to eliminate armed Ukrainian radicals.