“The Ukrainian Defense Ministry is closely monitoring the situation near the state border between Ukraine and Russia, as well as the temporarily occupied Crimean Peninsula, Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.
According to the Ministry’s Directorate General of Intelligence, from the beginning of November 2021, a total of about 90,000 troops will be concentrated near our border and in areas temporarily occupied by Russia, ”the news portal quoted the ministry as saying.
In a statement posted on its website, the ministry explained that these forces include troops from Operations 8 and 20 from the Southern and Western Military Districts, as well as forces and assets of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. In addition, separate units and units of the Russian Air Force and air defense are stationed near the Ukrainian border. In the temporarily occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the Russian occupying forces deployed two corps.
The ministry recalled that in the second half of 2021, near the Ukrainian border, the Russian Armed Forces Command conducted large-scale command and staff exercises involving the Southern and Western Military Forces and some units and subsections of the Central Military District and airborne troops . “After the completion of these operational and combat training measures, units and subunits belonging to the Central Military District remained in the European part of Russia, including the Zelnya region in the Smolensk region, in the Smolensk region, about 260 km from the Ukrainian state limit,” the ministry said.
He added: Russia sometimes throws military units into Ukrainian territory, withdraws troops near the Ukrainian state border to maintain tensions in the region and exert political pressure on neighboring states.
Ukrainian news portal Pravda recalled that in recent days, the American newspaper The Washington Post was the first to report that Russia, in the spring, once again carried out a large-scale military merger along Ukraine’s borders. And the Politico news portal reportedly released satellite images taken on November 1, which testify that Russia is once again concentrating troops and military equipment near the Ukrainian border. However, on Tuesday, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (RNBO) Alexei Danilov denied the press releases as false information and said.
The Defense Ministry announcement is a sharp change in comparison.
Alexander Pavljuk, commander of Ukrainian joint forces fighting in the Donetsk basin, assured US journalist and military expert Nolan Peterson on Tuesday that the Ukrainian military was prepared for the possibility of Russia escalating armed conflict in the region. Already in March, Russia mobilized at least eighty thousand troops on Ukraine’s eastern border and in Crimea, which it arbitrarily captured in 2014, citing a military exercise.
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