A satellite image shows Russian SU-33 fighter planes near Ukraine's border. DigitalGlobe
Nato has released satellite images of the Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s eastern border: a powerful concentration of fighter planes, helicopters, artillery, infantry and special forces which officials say could be ready to move with just 12 hours notice.
The images appear to undermine official suggestions from Moscow that there is nothing unusual about the troop movements, nor any reason to be alarmed.
The pictures show rows of hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles apparently waiting for orders in fields and other temporary locations around 30 miles (50km) from the frontier. The images, taken in the past two weeks, show some of what Nato said was around 100 staging areas that were almost entirely unoccupied in February.
One of the images showed the previously empty Buturlinovka airbase 90 miles from the border now hosting dozens of fast jets, even though there are no hangars or other infrastructure normally associated with such activity. Another, of Belgorod, 25 miles from the border, showed about 21 helicopters on a greenfield site – again with no hangers or infrastructure – which officials said could be part of a forward operating base.
Russian SU-27/30, SU-24 and MiG-31 fighter jets on the tarmac at Buturlinovka airbase. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
“This is a capable force, ready to go,” said Brigadier Gary Deakin, who runs Nato’s crisis operations and management centre at the alliance’s military headquarters near Mons, Belgium. “It has the resources to move quickly into Ukraine if it was ordered to do so. It is poised at the moment, and it could move very fast.”
Deakin said between 35,000 and 40,000 Russian troops were “at a state of advanced readiness”, and could deploy “within 12 hours from a decision taken at the highest level”. With many of the troops and tanks currently based within about 30 miles from the border, that could mean crossing into Ukrainian territory within an hour of moving.
According to Nato the images reveal telltale signs of an invading force, and not merely troops on “exercise” as Moscow has claimed. The images apparently show that in Kuzminka, where tanks and infantry fighting vehicles have gathered, there are no proper barracks, significant buildings or even parking. “We just don’t see much infrastructure. There is more here than it was built for,” said Deakin.
Primorko-Akhtarsk airbase in southern Russia. Photograph: AP
Deakin warned that a potential strike force could go further than Ukraine’s eastern regions where pro-Russian elements are currently demanding secession. “Undoubtedly it could strike into eastern Ukraine, but it could also do a land bridge to Crimea, and potentially even down the Black Sea coast to Odessa. The capability is there, but we don’t know the intent,” Deakin said. “That is grounds for concern.” With a total armed personnel of just 130,000, Ukraine would be unlikely to provide much resistance to the invading Russians, officials added.
The images were released as separatist protests in mainly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine entered their fifth day, with pro-Moscow supporters still out in a standoff in two cities. Kiev has said protesters who seized public buildings in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv are copying events in Crimea, annexed by Russia last month.
Moscow has denied it is preparing an invading force. The Russian foreign ministry insisted on Wednesday that troops near Ukraine’s border posed no threat and the movements were nothing more than the “everyday activity of Russian troops on its territory”. But the Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, dismissed these claims. “As I speak, some 40,000 Russian troops are massed along Ukraine’s borders,” Rasmussen said in Prague on Thursday. “Not training, but ready for combat. We have seen the satellite images, day after day.”
A satellite image purporting to show Russian special forces at Yeysk, southern Russia. Photograph: AP
Russian officials have also accused Washington and Nato of fuelling tension in the region, with the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, claiming in a Guardian article that it the US and EU that are destabilising Ukraine.
Senior Nato officials have warned that the buildup is already having a psychological, destabilising effect, helping stoke up the turmoil in eastern Ukraine. “These masked guys would not be taking over government buildings if there were not 40,000 soldiers just across the border,” said one official.
The revelations come before next week’s meeting of top diplomats from the EU, Russia, Ukraine and the United States to discuss the crisis. The meeting’s venue has still to be decided, but it will gather Lavrov, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, the EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Deshchytsia.
At the same time, Nato is drawing up measures to bolster its defences in central and eastern Europe, and is likely to include a tripling of air patrols in the Baltics. Nato’s top military commander, the US air force general Philip Breedlove, will present proposals for air, land and sea reinforcements to Nato ambassadors next week. Britain is among the Nato members offering support, including four Typhoons, while Denmark has offered four F-16s and France has put forward another four, either Rafales or Mirages.
1. One might argue with the power of overwhelming
argument, that the recent clashes between the Ukraine government and the
Russian government (*) are showing us in fact a grim a picture of something in
the order of a rival-ridden confrontation between one mafia like organization
(Russia) and the other (Ukraine).
2. I purposely speak of two opposing, separate
nation-representing mafia-clans, given the immense corruption and criminal
behavior by the governing oligarch-clans on both sides (plus the sufficiently
documented, structural friendly interaction between both governments and a
number of the abusive oligarchs) together with the long tradition for
ultra-nationalism, fascism and theocratism within the two nation-states alike.
3. In that respect I am very glad, that Ukraine is NO
member of the NATO or the EU (yet), because the One for All and All for One
NATO-motto might have already ignited a mini-WWIII by now.
4. In the same context of a developing inter-national
mafia-war there is the renowned / feared Gaz-Prom button - 30& of all EU
oil and gaz is being imported from Russia, as you very well might know - so the
energy related sanctions that has been spoken of the other day by the capo di
tutti capi Putin, most probably will appear to be the first economical war
tactics by the Russian mafia to be employed.
5. I do consider for example a growing
confrontation-scenario like this : The current of Russian gas-supply will first
be slowly but certainly squeezed into the west of Ukraine and then gradually
extended to eastern Europe, until it will reach the energy vulnerable
industrial heartland of the EU.
6. Maybe partly parallel to that economical warfare
blackmail tactics, the contingent of ethnic Russians in the Ukraine will start
to (further) politically destabilize the country (and the Russian fifth column
in the Baltic's and Finland may likewise to be called into sabotage like
action).
7. At least as far as the developments between
"the East and the West" are directing at this moment, we hardly can
do anything else but conclude, that the outbreak of a civil war within the
Ukraine is closer than ever before and in that scenario, the west - given its
beating on the drums of war-rhetoric - might very well "feel obliged"
to intervene in a proxy-mode for the Ukraine mafia, who is fighting the Russian
mafia.
8. So to formulate it a little ironic : The happy cold
war days are here again and in the end will both damage the interests of the
Russian and the European people...
N.B. I can - nor can any other civilian - not judge on
/ determine the authenticity of the USA satellite pictures on the alleged build
up of Russian troops along the Russian-Ukraine border, which in the end might
have been easily produced with a little help from some photo-shopping friend :
Something like "in times of war, the truth always appears to be the first
victim"..
(*) Look for instance at the book "Mafia
State" from the hands of Guardian Russia correspondent Luke
Harding...
Take care Bob you may get drunk on the word "mafia" as you seem
to overindulge in its use. Mafia is a typical Sicilian phenomenon and to keep
on bestowing this label on distant Russia is both ridiculous and plainly
untrue.
1. Although I am not sure yet, from what perspective
of interests you are reacting here, but do not try the old semantic debating
trick on us (in order to plant a diversion from the subject of Russia the
Mafia-State) :
Mafia - in the more general (and publicly accepted)
meaning of the word, stands for (highly sophisticated sometimes nowadays)
ruthlessly and violently operating, organized crime EVRYWHERE IN THE WORLD
2. So the Japanes Yakuza, the Chinese Triads, the
South and Middle American drug-syndicates, the Russian and and Ukranian Olichargh
Mobsters, the well-known US crime syndycats, the Cosa Nostra of Sicily, the
Ndrangheta of Calabria, or the Camorra of Naples, or the Stidda and Sacra
Corona Unita of Puglia etc etc. are legitimately being referred to as
"MAFIA".
3, Given the intimate entanglement between the Russian
and the Ukrainian mafia with their distinctive successive national governments,
one is fully authorized to speak of a (rapidly developing) Mafia war between
Russia and the Ukraine in this ever-escalating confrontation.
4. One also has to take into account in this conflict,
the historically close contacts between the Russian and the Ukrainian
ultra-nationalist extreme-right militants and the distinctive governments of
Russia and Ukraine...
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