Kremlin: deployment of Russian troops to Ukrainian border should not be seen as a threat
The movement of Russian military equipment in Russian territory is exclusively an internal affair of Russia, said Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, commenting on reports about the deployment of Russian troops to the Ukrainian border
"Russia has never threatened, threatens or posed a danger to anyone," Peskov said.
He added that Moscow is forced to take measures to ensure its own security "against the background of quite aggressive expansionist tendencies, especially from NATO and a number of other countries."
The Washington Post reported that Russian troops are again being deployed near the Donbas. Officials in the United States and the European Union responsible for monitoring the situation told the publication that "unusual movements" of the Russian army have been observed for several weeks, which causes concern in Brussels and Washington.
According to the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA), satellite images recorded the transfer from the Moscow region of personnel and equipment of the 1st Guards Tank Army, as well as the concentration on the border of the forces of the 41st Combined Arms Army, which did not return to the home city (Novosibirsk) after the Russian-Belarusian exercises Zapad-2021.
On November 1, Politico published the images taken by Maxar Technologies, in which Jane's analysts identified a cluster of military equipment, including tanks, near the town of Yelnya in the Smolensk region, about 250 km from the border with Ukraine.
Western experts saw the equipment of the 4th Tank Division of Russia near Bryansk and Kursk, including self-propelled artillery systems.
While Peskov de facto confirmed the deployment of troops, Russian state media called the reports "stupid." "No one is going to attack anyone, especially to move an entire tank army," Lieutenant General Yevgeny Buzhinsky, former head of the international treaty department of the Russian Defense Ministry, told RIA Novosti.
The editor-in-chief of the magazine "National Defense" Igor Korotchenko accused the West of a "large-scale disinformation campaign to discredit" Russia.