Satellite images show that Russia has recently built a new military base in Crimea, a report said.
US-affiliated governments are accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of secretly gathering troops – for reasons unknown – for fear of invasion, the Daily Mail reported.
The images show rows of military vehicles and troop tents in Crimea, a Russian-speaking peninsula south of mainland Ukraine that Putin annexed after a controversial referendum in 2014.
An April 13 photo, taken by PlanetLabs and published by the Daily Mail, shows “at least 1,000 vehicles” and a significant number of tents for infantry troops, the paper reported.
“It is the highest Russian military deployment ever on the Ukrainian borders,” Josep Borrell, head of foreign policy for the European Union, said Monday.
The new images come after President Biden last week offered Putin a summer summit in Europe without preconditions. Biden seemed to blink this month over a decision to send warships to the Black Sea over Russian aggression in Ukraine. The Pentagon ordered a U-turn by two American destroyers.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has supported pro-Russian insurgents in neighboring republics – including supporting Allied breakaway states in Georgia and Moldova.
Putin led the annexation of Crimea almost a decade ago without the consent of Ukraine in a rare current border change by force.
The deployment of Russian forces is often obscure, but Putin’s government is said to have sent troops to Crimea to facilitate the 2014 annexation and secretly supported a few breakaway provinces in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine .
In Ukraine, a large number of people speak Russian instead of Ukrainian, and the country’s politics alternated between pro-Western and pro-Russian until protests in 2014 expelled pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych. His deposition sparked pro-Russian protests in the south and east of Ukraine.