Paul Sonne, Robyn Dixon, David L. Stern – Washington Post Oct 30, 2021
A renewed buildup of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border has raised concern among some officials in the United States and Europe who are tracking what they consider irregular movements of equipment and personnel on Russia’s western flank.
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the troop movements have reignited concerns that arose in April, when the largest buildup of troops by Russia near the Ukrainian border in years sparked an international outcry.
The renewed movements of Russian forces in the area come as the Kremlin embraces a harder line on Ukraine. Russian officials from President Vladimir Putin on down have escalated their rhetoric in recent months, attacking Kyiv’s Western ties and even questioning its sovereignty. Putin has warned that any expansion of NATO military infrastructure on Ukrainian territory represents a “red line” for Moscow.
The situation also comes as the simmering 7½-year conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Donbas region enters a new stage. On Oct. 26, Ukraine’s military confirmed it had used a Turkish-made drone against a position in Donbas, the first time Kyiv has employed the technology in combat, prompting an outcry from Moscow.
Relations between Moscow and NATO are especially tense. Russia suspended its mission to NATO in Brussels on Oct. 18 after the alliance expelled eight members of the Russian mission on accusations of espionage.
What the Russian forces gathering near the Ukrainian border are doing is unclear.
Videos have surfaced on social media in recent days showing Russian military trains and convoys moving large quantities of military hardware, including tanks and missiles, in southern and western Russia.
“The point is: It is not a drill. It doesn’t appear to be a training exercise. Something is happening. What is it?” said Michael Kofman, director of the Russia studies program at the Virginia-based nonprofit analysis group CNA.
Officials in the United States and Europe began noticing the movements particularly in recent weeks, after Russia concluded a massive joint military exercise with Belarus known as Zapad 2021 on its western flank in mid-September.
According to Kofman, publicly available satellite imagery shows that forces from Russia’s 41st Combined Arms Army, normally based in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, didn’t return to Siberia after the exercises, and instead linked up with other Russian forces near the Ukrainian border. Kofman also said footage posted online appears to show that Russia’s 1st Guards Tank Army, an elite unit based outside Moscow, is moving personnel and materiel toward Ukraine.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, said in a statement that after the conclusion of the Zapad 2021 exercises, Russia left military equipment, as well as control and communications centers, at training sites along the Ukrainian border.
Danilov estimated that the number of Russian troops deployed around the Ukrainian border at 80,000 to 90,000, not including the tens of thousands stationed in Crimea.
Moscow has prompted alarm by amassing large contingents of troops near the Ukrainian border in the past, only to subsequently withdraw those forces and quell fears of a renewed invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials see such moves as a way for Moscow to keep the situation tense and uncertain. Since 2015, when the front lines of the conflict more or less froze in place, the buildups haven’t led to a mass territory-gaining offensive by Russia or the separatist forces it backs.
Kofman said this time the situation may merit particular attention, however, because Russia appears to have lowered its threshold for what would prompt the Kremlin to act in Ukraine.
“I think you have to step back and look at this past year holistically, and if you do, you will know that the Russian tone and messaging on Ukraine has changed dramatically,” he said.
In statements over the course of the year, Putin and other top Russian officials have said the expansion of NATO activities in Ukraine represents a “red line” for Moscow, whereas previously they cited NATO membership for Ukraine as a move they couldn’t abide, Kofman said.
“It appears that Russia is shifting the goal post of what is acceptable,” he said.
Putin outlined that view in an article in July, claiming Ukraine was being functionally controlled by Western nations to foment anti-Russian sentiment.
“We will never allow our historical territories and people close to us living there to be used against Russia,” Putin wrote. “And to those who will undertake such an attempt, I would like to say that this way they will destroy their own country.”
In comments to the Valdai Discussion Club this month, Putin said formal NATO membership for Ukraine may never happen, “but military expansion on the territory is already underway, and this really poses a threat to the Russian Federation.”
Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and now the deputy head of Russia’s security council, called Ukraine a “vassal state” that is “under direct foreign control” in an Oct. 11 article in the Kommersant newspaper.
Previously, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Putin, accused the United States of building NATO military bases in Ukraine using training centers as a cover.
U.S. troops have been training Ukrainian forces in western Ukraine for years, an initiative undertaken by Washington and its NATO allies after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Ukrainian forces also have participated in joint exercises with the United States and its NATO allies. The United States has provided Ukraine with Javelin antitank weaponry but has not taken any active role in fighting.
Kofman said Russia this year suddenly invested a large amount of money in developing a ready reserve for its military and also ordered forces to practice anti-drone and anti-Javelin maneuvers relevant to the conflict in Ukraine, attracting the attention of military analysts.
Putin has condemned comments by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who during a visit to Ukraine this month described Russia as an obstacle to peace and said NATO membership remained open to Kyiv. Austin, referring to Russia, said no nation had a right to veto membership.
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Thursday accused Ukraine of having plans to retake control of the Donbas region by force. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov a day earlier said sales of Turkish drones to Ukraine potentially “destabilized” the situation.
German and French Foreign Ministry officials expressed concern about Ukraine’s use of Turkish-made drones, calling for de-escalation. But Ukrainian officials said the country was exercising its right to self-defense after a Russian howitzer attack killed a Ukrainian serviceman and wounded another.
“When the Ukrainian army feels the need to defend its land, it does so. And it will further act under this principle,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in comments to journalists Friday.
“We are not mounting an offensive, we are just responding,” Zelensky added.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Russia is “actively spreading fakes about Ukraine allegedly preparing an offensive or other nonsense. For the record, Ukraine does not prepare any offensive in the Donbas.”
Kuleba noted that Moscow has left in place hardware and personnel that were sent near the Ukrainian border during the spring buildup and the September exercises.
The Russians “pulled back only a tiny part of the armada,” Kuleba said.
The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv warned Friday that Russia had repeatedly deployed howitzer artillery and drones against Ukrainian forces “in direct violation” of a July 2020 cease-fire agreement.
“Official Russian rhetoric suggesting Ukraine is aggravating the situation is not only misleading, it serves to escalate tensions,” the U.S. statement said.
When the apostles those homosxual left wingers that worked for rothschild
met in 1936 they were told by lord rothschild
that he and his jews owned Russia The USA and UK
and they would entice Hitler to invade the USSR so that the jew owned countries could desroy Germany
after Hitler took the country away from the jew bankers
Rothschild also said these 3 countries were owned by him any wars would be fake
and would be used to take finance and wipe out populations
Russia moves its own troops inside its own border and our own war criminals say that’s a concern? What a nerve! The US and its war criminal allies including Israel have just flown a nuclear-capable bomber and accompanying jet fighters over a stretch of contested water – presumably the Persian Gulf – in what they term a show of defiance to Iran.
I hope if it’s attacked Iran cuts the forked tongue out of all of them to silence them forever. I am sick of hearing their belligerence described as defence or fortitude and want to see them all hurt one last time.
“What the Russian forces gathering near the Ukrainian border are doing is unclear.”
It is very clear. Russia is defending itself. I hope the Russians go into Ukraine & take over. Most Ukrainian military won’t fight the Russians. Remember officers threatening their own men with guns to make them fight in Eastern Ukraine?
Amerika has cut gas supplies to Europe, Putin, please turn off the gas to Europe.
The US/NATO started this conflict with the CIA/Jew lead overthrow of the duly elected Ukraine government in 2014. Remember the Satanic Jew Khazar Victoria Nuland and the Maidan revolt? Since then, the Ukronazis have killed about 14,000 civilians in the two breakaway areas with artillery fire on civilian housing areas. Putin so easily and carefully taking Crimea has infuriated the Satanic Ashkenazi Khazars who run the US government. The Jew Satanists wanted to recover their natural homelands between the Black and Caspian Seas. The whole problem comes from the Jew Satanists who have control of the US government. The US and NATO will push Putin until he destroys the Ukronazi army. All of the leaders of Ukraine since 2014 have been Jews, from Yats to Poroshenko to the current clown. Strange, as the Jew population in Ukraine is less than 5%. The real question is WHY the Ashkenazi Khazar Satanists want to return to their true homelands. Maybe they know they will eventually run out of the MidEast??
https://gloria.tv/post/i2Jcmc3ubk4p12xFb3XN449Le
YALTA AGREEMENT HAS TO BE GRANTED !
Somebody needs to remind Ukrainians and Americans, Russians are not Palestinians.
Remind me again, what’s the agenda, climate change or war?
Them two are diametrically opposed.
The ‘Great Reset’ should really be ‘no war’, but it’s not, is it?
It’s war, and threats of war.
The US , England and Germany won’t be happy until they start a major war. Than no one will be happy. Russia don’t let them bully You. Enough already. I also hope You go into Ukraine and take over. Show these countries You mean business.
russian troops have to learn like
american troops that they are only
lured into wars by their jewish masters .
Don’t worry about it, its just the Zionist Cryptocrats playing chess against themselves…Ratchild moves a Russian piece & then goes to the other side of the board & moves an American one…The moronic masses think the conflict is ‘real’; but its all a game controlled by one cult…figure it out, if you can..
@Nico X
First time I’ve agreed with what you have said!
There are pictures online of Putin,George Bush and Xi Jinping walking hand in hand dressed in their masonic gowns.
They have probably made a deal with Russia, to give the Ukraine over to its sphere of influence in exchange for Russia butting out of the planned war against Iran. Apart from putting us in the West under its totalitarian control through all of their UN Agendas, WEF and Covid resets and pretexts, Iran and Syria are the Rotshchild’s major targets right now for Middle East hegemony and the planned future trading hub with the Belt & Road Initiative through Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. For proof of this, I would check out the work going on through Afghanistan by Chinese government-controlled firms with Chinese army and coolies doing most of the work on the project. It is obviously the reason why the American departed after doing the dirty work of fragmenting the people and arming their terrorist Taliban puppets to run the nation and protect the interests of the ruling Rothschild dynasty.
Putin means what he says. The problem is that the West is controlled by stupids and crazies. The Russians know that war is inevitable. It’s just a question of when.
Robert: Faked pictures.
@Robert…right, they’re all on the same team…its all a grand charade for morons…
The rulers never want anyone getting so strong that they get out of hand. Russia is denied Daftgunnystan and the Ukraine because they can both mean more Coast for Russia. For a country so big it has almost nothing.
The audacious hypocrisy of the Jewnited States, Jew-K, and Jewropean Jewnion makes me want to vomit.
remember our only enemy is the jew
begin by burning down all synagogues
Nico X: I am fed up with this simplistic ‘They’re all in it together’ rant. The problem is that down the road from me in Whitehall, there are thoiusands of thicko sheeple, some are allegedly quite clever, yet, though a lifetime of indoctrination, failed culture, peer pressure and status, they support murderers and liars, such as Blair, Cameron, Hague, & Boris. There are countless others in the UK and elsewhere.
@ SEEMORE BUTT
keep in mind Mossad would retaliate
with mininukes .
Read the cover of the 2020 Economist and others and it will tell you what is going to happen as well as 1988 show the end of the dollar which in 1997 on the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (Freemason Cathedral) showed 9/11, the elimination of civilized society and the end of finance as we know it is next, then are the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse and Finally the Birth of the New World Order. Take a look at Leeland Jones’ video of the 3rd Temple already built except the upper facade and the Israeli Supreme Court and the City of Astana, Kazakstan the capital of the world with hand prints of all religious leaders an the layout which is just as Washington DC, which has been, like the Whore in Staten Island, demonic in layout and rituals. The Light you must know stands for the Shining One (later changed from Halal/Halel to Lucifer).
We are already dead, near the bottom of the once though bottomless pit with Apollyon (Abbadon, the Shining One, the Devil) and it was man, a cancer to creation, an anathema to creator and creation that performed the work following their leader’s orders. All countries have been under the rule of ONE and that one is safe and sound making false promissory notes and perpetual debt which has no value which we call money.
@Carl Jones…its not my fault that a cult of mongrel Jews clandestinely manages the world behind their visible political shills..
jew NWO dictatorship is a new
babilonian tower building !
NOTHING ELSE + WILL FAIL !