Photo: MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AFP/Getty Images
For: The opinion
Ukraine insists that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be planning an “anniversary” attack on the country on February 24 with half a million troops.
Ukraine’s defense minister Oleksii Reznikov has said Moscow has amassed hundreds of thousands of troops and might “try something” on the first anniversary of its invasion.
The new great offensive would mark another phase of the ongoing warand comes after longstanding fears that Russia could use the anniversary date to renew its efforts to seize Ukraine.
Reznikov said the Kremlin has assembled half a million troops for the potential offensive.
In September of last year, Putin announced a general mobilization that reinforced his forces with some 300,000 soldiers.
But Reznikov warned that the real number could be much higher: “Officially they announced 300,000, but when we see the troops at the borders, according to our assessments, they are much more“.
This comes as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned that there was no indication that Putin had been deterred from his goal of total conquest of Ukraine.
He said: “That they are actively acquiring new weapons, more ammunition, increasing their own production, but also acquiring more weapons from other authoritarian states like Iran and North Korea.
“And above all, we haven’t seen any sign that President Putin has changed his overall goal of this invasion, which is to control a neighbor, to control Ukraine. So as long as this is the case, we must be prepared for the long term,” he insisted.
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