“For months now, Russia has been deploying forces to Crimea and along Ukraine’s border, including in Belarus. It has progressed at a consistent and steady pace involving tens of thousands of Russian troops, and it is being supported by increased Russian naval activity in the Northern Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. While we don’t believe that President Putin has made a final decision to use these forces against Ukraine, he clearly now has that capability. Conflict is not inevitable. There is still time and space for diplomacy.” “The Russian Federation has amassed upwards at this time of over 100,000 ground forces, air forces, naval forces, special forces, cyberelectronic warfare, command and control, logistics engineers and other capabilities along the Ukraine border. This is larger in scale and scope in the massing of forces than anything we have seen in recent memory. And I think you’d have to go back quite a while into the Cold War days to see something of this magnitude. Given the type of forces that are arrayed, the ground maneuver forces, the artillery, the ballistic missiles, the air forces, all of it packaged together, if that was unleashed on Ukraine, it would be significant, very significant, and it would result in a significant amount of casualties. And you can imagine what that might look like in dense urban areas, along roads and so on and so forth. It would be horrific. It would be terrible. And it’s not necessary. And we think a diplomatic outcome is the way to go here.”
Pentagon: Russia Has More Than 100,000 Troops at Ukraine’s Borders
