The number of Russian troops along Ukraine’s borders could be much higher than officials previously indicated.
The U.S. mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe estimated in a new statement Friday that Russia’s troop buildup is somewhere “between 169,000 and 190,000” when counting the troops along the border in Russia and Belarus, occupied Crimea, and the forces in eastern Ukraine.
The group described the looming threat of an invasion to be “the most significant military mobilization in Europe since the Second World War,” while the Kremlin “refuses to shed further light on its unprecedented military build-up.”
SENATE SPLIT ON IMPOSING RUSSIAN SANCTIONS BEFORE OR AFTER INVASION OF UKRAINE
For weeks, U.S. officials said the troop buildup amassed to more than 100,000, though they also repeatedly declined to provide a more precise count. Earlier this week, President Joe Biden said there were more than 150,000 Russian troops on the border, while a senior administration official said they had increased the total presence “by as many as 7,000” a day later.
The increased troop presence came as Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was in favor of returning to the negotiating table to figure out a diplomatic way to defuse the situation. The official said, “Every indication we have now is they mean only to publicly offer to talk and make claims about de-escalation while privately mobilizing for war.”
Biden and other administration officials have taken their warning calls to a new octave in recent days with the president saying on Thursday that the possibility of an invasion is “very high” and that it “will happen within the next several days.”
The United States has repeatedly sought diplomatic solutions to the threat, Biden has prepared military options (though they wouldn’t openly engage with Russian forces), and it has provided weapons and aid to Ukraine and other Eastern European allies.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced a $6 billion contract for military equipment Friday during a stop in Warsaw to meet with Polish Minister of National Defense Mariusz Blaszczak. The deal nets the Polish 250 M1A2 Abrams tanks, 250 counter-IED systems, 26 M88 combat recovery vehicles, 17 joint assault bridges, 276 M2 .50-caliber machine guns, and thousands of rounds of explosive tracers, according to Defense One.
“This is the most modern version of the Abrams and will provide Poland with a highly advanced tank capability that will also strengthen our interoperability with the Polish armed forces, boosting the credibility of our combined deterrence efforts in those of other NATO allies,” Austin said.
U.S. officials have warned for weeks that Russia could launch a “false flag operation” to create a reason to justify military force.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday that they had “seen attempts” by Russia to stage such an incident. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson characterized recent shelling in the disputed Donbas region as “a false flag operation designed to discredit the Ukrainians, designed to create a pretext, a spurious provocation for Russian action.”
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Putin will oversee new military exercises on Saturday, according to Russian media outlet TASS.
The ministry of defense said the exercises will include the testing of ballistic and cruise missiles, and it claimed it had been “planned earlier to check the readiness of military command and control agencies, launch combat crews, crews of warships and strategic missile carriers to assigned tasks, as well as the reliability of weapons of strategic nuclear and non-nuclear forces.”
Russia has repeatedly said that it does not want to see NATO expand into Ukraine, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that’s a goal for his country.
