Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksi Reznikov quoted an intelligence report on Friday (December 3) that Russia has assembled more than 94,000 soldiers near the Ukrainian border and may be preparing to launch a large-scale military offensive at the end of January .
Reznikov stated that Ukraine will not do anything to provoke the situation, but is prepared to fight back when Russia launches an attack.
Ukraine and its NATO allies have issued warnings this year about the movement of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border, raising concerns that a brewing conflict in eastern Ukraine may erupt into an open war.
“Our intelligence analyzed all situations, including the worst,” Reznikov said. “It pointed out that the possibility of a large-scale upgrade in Russia exists. The most likely time to prepare for the upgrade is the end of January.”
Ukraine has this week put pressure on its EU and NATO allies to prepare a package of severe sanctions to prevent Russia from launching an offensive.
Moscow in turn accused Ukraine and the United States of destabilizing behavior, and hinted that Kiev may be preparing to launch its own offensive in eastern Ukraine, which the Ukrainian authorities strongly deny.
US Secretary of State Anthony Brinken warned Moscow on Thursday that Russia will pay a “serious price” if the situation escalates, and urged the Russian Secretary of State to seek a diplomatic exit from the crisis.
Brinken said that President Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putin are likely to speak soon.
The Kremlin said on Friday that it was arranging a video call between them the day after their senior diplomats met to discuss the Ukrainian crisis.
In 2014, after Moscow-backed troops seized the eastern Ukrainian territory that Kiev hoped to reclaim, relations between Ukraine and Russia fell apart. Kiev said that since then, about 14,000 people have been killed in the fighting.
Since the beginning of the recent crisis, Moscow has offered the West a legally binding security assurance that NATO will not accept Ukraine as a member, nor will it deploy missile systems there to target Russia.
Ukraine stated that Russia has no say in its ambitions to join the NATO alliance and believes that any security guarantee is illegal.
“The escalation is a possible situation, but it is not inevitable. Our task is to prevent it from happening,” Reznikov said. “We must make the invaders unable to accept the cost of upgrading.”
