The Washington Post reported that Russia could mobilize 175,000 troops to attack Ukraine from multiple fronts early next year.
An unnamed U.S. official told the Washington Post in an interview with the Washington Post, "Russia plans to attack Ukraine in early 2022 with twice the number of troops it mobilized in an exercise near the Ukrainian border last spring." He said there would be extensive operations by several battalions of tactical groups.
According to U.S. intelligence documents, including satellite images, the WP reported that 50 Russian combat tactical corps had been assembled in four areas and that tanks and artillery had been newly deployed.
The document also mentioned the possibility that the Russian military could increase the speed of operation by leaving the weapons as they are after training and using them in an actual attack on Ukraine.
Ukraine's defense intelligence chief Kirillo Budanov said last month that "Russia has assembled more than 92,000 troops at the Ukrainian border and is preparing an attack to invade Ukraine at the end of January or early February next year." .
According to US data, the number of Russian troops currently deployed is about 70,000, but it is likely to increase to 175,000 in the future. It's possible.
The Russian military even called tens of thousands of reservists this year, but the US government said it was concerned that 100,000 reservists could be added to the 70,000 deployed on the Ukrainian border.
Meanwhile, U.S. and Ukrainian officials predicted that the Russian attack would be much larger than the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
They also observed that they would seek to obtain conditional surrender and security guarantees from Ukraine and the West by attacking Ukraine from multiple fronts rather than occupying large-scale territory.
US Secretary of State Tony Blincoln said on the 11th of last month that "I don't know clearly Russia's intentions, but I know the Russian script."
On the other hand, Russian President Vladimir Putin on the 18th of last month rather criticized the West for exacerbating the conflict in the Donbas (eastern Ukraine) region by providing Ukraine with modern weapons of lethality and joint exercises in the Black Sea.
At a high-level meeting between the US and Russia on the 2nd in Sweden, Secretary Blincoln warned of "serious consequences" of an invasion of Ukraine, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, "Involving Ukraine into the US geopolitical game is not It will have serious consequences.”
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to meet soon to discuss the matter.