A senior U.S. government official has confirmed that on Monday, soon after declaring the territories ‘independent,' Russian leader Vladimir Putin has deployed ‘peacekeeping' troops to the two areas of eastern Ukraine controlled since 2014 by pro-Russian separatists.
The two regions, the self-declared Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and Donestk People ‘s Republic (DPR), broke from Ukraine with the help of Russia's ‘little green men' irregular special forces in 2014 as Putin invaded the strategic peninsula of Crimea in southern Ukraine during the Obama-Biden administration.
Video has been shared on social media of Russian troops being bussed into the Donbas.
Military Times (MT) reported:
“Just in the last hour, we've seen Russia or troops to deploy into the DPR and LPR for so-called peacekeeping functions,” said the senior administration official, who declined to confirm reports by the Russian Interfax news agency and social media posts showing additional Russian forces entering the Donbas.
MT added:
There are already more than 150,000 Russian troops surrounding Ukraine. The official pointed out that Russian troops have repeatedly entered the region since Russia invaded in 2014, during which time more than 14,000 people have been killed in fighting. But he declined to set a red line on what further incursions would prompt an additional U.S. response.
The West has accused Russia of supporting the pro-Russian separatists, but Moscow has always insisted that Russians who fought there were simply volunteers. That charade now appears to be over.
Putin's pre-recorded speech justifying his aggressive actions blamed NATO for the current crisis, calling the U.S.-led alliance an existential threat to Russia.
Putin's moves, added to a spike in military skirmishes in these same eastern regions, could help create the pretext Putin is planning to justify attacking the pro-western democracy and NATO partner nation. As a partner nation, not a NATO member, Ukraine does not have the guaranteed collective defense protections full members possess.
In a frightening show of weakness, the senior administration official doubled down on Joe Biden's impertinent pledge not to deploy U.S. forces to Ukraine, even if Americans are included in a roundup of perceived enemies by Russian forces, as earlier described in a letter to the United Nations. The official added, according to Military Times:
We have been warning individuals and groups we think could be targeted based on our understanding and our knowledge of Russian plans to try to enable them to protect themselves or move to places where they might be safer, but I have nothing to add to what the president already said, which is that he had no intention of sending American forces to fight inside Ukraine.
