State Of War
by Christopher J. Miller, Mark Rachkevych
KYIVPost.com
March 28, 2014
Russia is mobilizing for war and may be poised for a springtime invasion of Ukraine’s mainland, after stealing Crimea in less than three weeks.
Tens of thousands of Russian troops and military hardware, including artillery, tanks, warplanes and helicopters are amassing and carrying out war games on all sides of Ukraine.
High concentrations have been spotted in Russia’s Klimovo in the north and Russia’s Belgorod in the northeast, in Russian-annexed Crimea in the south and in Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region in the southwest, as well as sizable groups carrying out military exercises in Belarus in the north.
As a spring invasion of mainland Ukraine looms large, Yevhen Marchuk, a retired Ukrainian general and former defense minister, warned on March 27 that the crisis is intensifying, saying that Russia has now moved to the “second phase” of its plan “to eliminate” Ukraine as a nation.
“There are many signs of an imminent attack,” he told journalists at the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center. “Now it is in fact war time.”
Estimates of Russian troops on war footing vary, from the West’s estimates of more than 30,000 to the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council’s calculations of 100,000 soldiers ready to strike.
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