Russia accelerates movement of military hardware towards Ukraine, satellite images show
New satellite imagery obtained by CNN shows that a large base which held Russian tanks, artillery and other armor near the Ukrainian border has been largely emptied, with the equipment apparently being moved much closer to the frontier in recent days.
The base is at Yelnya, southeast of the city of Smolensk and some 160 miles from the Ukrainian border. Large amounts of weaponry were moved there late in 2021 -- including some 700 tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and ballistic missile launchers.
Much
of that equipment is now gone, according to radar satellite imagery
acquired on February 6. Cloud cover had prevented photographic imagery
of the site for several days previously. The images show the tracks of
departing vehicles.
Stephen
Wood, senior director at satellite imagery company Maxar, told CNN: "It
looks to me like a considerable amount of the vehicles [tanks,
self-propelled artillery and other support vehicles] have departed from
the northeastern vehicle park; additional armored vehicles departed from
the more central vehicle park."
'Entering the new stage of the build-up'
Konrad
Muzyka, an expert in tracking military movements with Rochan
Consulting, says what has happened at Yelnya is one of several
"important changes in Russian force compositions and their locations."
He
told CNN: "We are entering the new stage of the build-up where we are
seeing pre-positioned units being manned with additional personnel and
that equipment is being moved probably to staging areas."
Social
media videos shot in the last few days show some of that equipment on
trains and roads much further south in the Bryansk region, which is
close to Ukraine. The armor and vehicles are identifiably from the same
units that had pre-positioned at Yelnya.
"We
know that Yelnya hosts elements of the 41st army of the CMD [Russia's
Central Military District] that arrived from Siberia last spring to a
training ground near Voronezh and whose vehicles were later moved to
Yelnya," Russian journalist Rusland Leviev of the Conflict Investigation
Team (CIT), a Russian open-source intelligence group, told CNN.
Social
media videos around Bryansk show military vehicles with "76" and "87"
codes on their number plates which denote the CMD, he pointed out.
Leviev
added that the CIT believes the vehicles are moving to Bryansk,
"because we saw two videos of the same convoy in Smolensk region and
then in Bryansk region to the south," which the group geolocated against
crowdsourced dashcam footage and satellite imagery.
"We
also saw videos of several trains that were posted by social media
users from Bryansk region. On the carriages we could read 8-digit
identification codes, which, when checked against openly accessible
databases, trace the train's origins to Yelnya."
"This
is important because those vehicles previously were several hundred
kilometers away from the border, and now [they] are stopping in mere
dozens [of kilometers away]."
Thomas
Bullock, an analyst at Janes, wrote: "There are now multiple indicators
suggesting troops have begun deploying to forward camps to join up with
their prepositioned equipment." He also added that videos posted on
social media indicate that troops from Siberia, whose equipment has
already been moved to sites in Smolensk and Bryansk, are in the process
of deploying.
A
US intelligence document dated December 3, 2021 included satellite
imagery showing that the site at Yelnya was empty in June -- but by
November was home to five Battalion Tactical Groups, each of which
contains about 1,000 troops and supporting elements. Much of the
equipment belongs to the 41st Combined Arms Army, which is normally
based in Russia's CMD and has its headquarters in Novosibirsk in
Siberia.
Muzyka
says there are substantial Russian movements elsewhere. "We are seeing a
massive influx of vehicles and personnel in Kursk," he tweeted Sunday.
Kursk is some 70 miles (100 kilometers) from the border with Ukraine.
Phillip
Karber of the Potomac Foundation in Washington, who has also studied
Russian troop movements in detail, told CNN: "Russia's strongest
offensive formation -- the First Guards Tank Army, which is normally
stationed in the Moscow area -- has moved south 400 kilometers and is
assembling in the optimum area for a rapid armored offensive on the
Khursk-Kyiv invasion route."
On
Sunday, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told ABC News: "We
believe that there is a very distinct possibility that Vladimir Putin
will order an attack on Ukraine. It could take a number of different
forms. It could happen as soon as tomorrow or it could take some weeks
yet."
Separately
US officials told CNN at the weekend that Russian President Vladimir
Putin has now assembled 70% of the military personnel and weapons on
Ukraine's borders he would need for a full-scale invasion of the
country.
This includes a growing force in southern Belarus.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any plans for a military offensive against Ukraine.
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