Russia is moving thousands of military personnel and a great deal of equipment toward the southeastern Ukrainian border area held by Russian-allied rebels. The deployments are likely to portend a new offensive by those rebels.

While Russia’s Southern Military Theater command had previously announced major exercises were to be held, the scale and combined arms diversity of the particular units deployed is striking. This includes a heavy emphasis on infantry fighting vehicles, rapid mobility airborne and special forces, air force fighter and bomber units, and logistics trains. Moving these forces is expensive and complex and is already constricting Russian civilian economic activity by disrupting arterial train routes.