Satellite imagery shows that Russia recently built a new military base in Crimea, according to a report.
The US allied governments are accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of secretly gathering troops – for unknown reasons – amid fears of an invasion, the Daily Mail reports.
The images show lines of military vehicles and troop tents in Crimea, a Russian-speaking peninsula south of mainland Ukraine that Putin annexed after a 2014 referendum.
The newspaper reported a April 13 photo, taken by PlanetLabs and published by the Daily Mail, showing ‘at least 1,000 vehicles’ and a significant number of tents for infantry troops.
“This is the highest Russian military deployment at the Ukrainian borders ever,” said Josep Borrell, head of the European Union.
The new images come after President Biden hosted a summer summit in Europe to Putin last week without conditions. This month, Biden appears to be winking at a decision to send warships to the Black Sea over Russian aggression in Ukraine. The Pentagon recommends a turn by two American destroyers.
Since the outbreak of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has supported pro-Russian insurgents in neighboring republics – including the suspension of Allied breakaway countries in Georgia and Moldova.
Putin put forward the annexation of Crimea almost a decade ago without the consent of Ukraine in a rare current border change with violence.
The deployment of Russian troops is often dark, but the Putin government has reportedly deployed troops to the Crimea to facilitate annexation in 2014 and support some breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.
In Ukraine, a large number of people speak Russian rather than Ukrainian, and the country’s politics fluctuate between pro-Western and pro-Russian until protests in 2014 that drove out pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych. His expulsion sparked pro-Russian protests across southern and eastern Ukraine.