The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said units of the Russian 41st army have remained near Yelnya, a town about 260 kilometers (160 miles) north of the Ukrainian border. Ukraine has complained that Moscow has kept over 90,000 troops not far from the two countries’ border following massive war games in western Russia in the fall. intelligence officials last week determined that Russia is planning to deploy an estimated 175,000 troops and almost half of them are already stationed along various points near Ukraine’s border in preparation for a possible invasion that could begin as soon as early 2022. More than 14,000 people have died in the fighting that devastated Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland known as Donbas.Ī 2015 peace agreement brokered by France and Germany helped end large-scale battles, but efforts to reach a political settlement have failed, and sporadic skirmishes have continued along the tense line of contact.Įarlier this year, a spike in cease-fire violations in the east and a Russian troop concentration near Ukraine fueled war fears, but tensions abated when Moscow pulled back the bulk of its forces after maneuvers in April.

Moscow denied that, charging that Russians who joined the separatists were volunteers.

Ukraine and the West accused Russia of sending its troops and weapons to back the rebels. Russia responded by annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and throwing its weight behind a separatist insurgency that broke out in Ukraine's east.

The country has moved to shed its Russian imperial legacy and forge increasingly close ties with the West.Ī decision by Kremlin-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to reject an association agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Moscow sparked mass protests that led to his ouster in 2014. Ukraine, which was part of the Russian empire for centuries before becoming a Soviet republic, won independence as the USSR broke up in 1991.

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