Russian Troops Amass Near Ukraine's Border

UPDATE: As additional Russian troops surround Ukraine, the US and its allies say an invasion may come at any moment.

• In the long standoff between the Kremlin and the West over Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine, tensions have never been higher.
• As Russian forces continue to encircle Ukraine by land and sea, more than a dozen nations have urged their citizens to leave Ukraine, warning that an attack could come at any moment.
• US officials say signs of a Russian military escalation are troubling, and that an attack would likely begin with an aerial bombardment, resulting in a considerable number of civilian casualties.
• On Saturday, US President Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone for an hour, but reached no agreement for a deescalation.
• On Monday and Tuesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will travel to Kyiv and Moscow in an effort to defuse tensions, but German officials said a breakthrough is unlikely.
• An additional 3000 US troops are scheduled to land in Poland this week as the US acts to fortify NATO’s eastern flank—a move the Kremlin sees as a provocation.
• Putin has invested heavily in rebuilding Russia’s once tattered military. Analysts fear he now stands ready to use it in a bid to reassert Russian power on the world stage.
• BACKGROUND: Russian President Vladimir Putin has waged a long war on Ukraine. In 2014, Russian troops annexed Crimea, a peninsula that was part of Ukraine.
• Since then, Putin has backed pro-Russian separatist fighters in the eastern Ukraine region of Donbas. The on-and-off again conflict has claimed more than 14,000 lives.
• In Putin’s view, much of modern Ukraine sits on historically Russian territory. But that is perhaps not his primary motivation for threatening to invade.
• Putin’s larger ambition is to fortify Russia’s “sphere of influence over Eastern Europe. As such, he fears the strategic consequences of Ukraine falling under the influence of NATO and the West.
• Some experts say Putin wants to resurrect the power Russia enjoyed during the Soviet Union. Putin has acted to militarize Russian society, and the regime increasingly glorifies the Soviet past.