As the Ukraine crisis evolves, the military machinery on both sides gears up for combat, with Russia moving troops and equipment towards Ukraine and NATO sending reinforcements to Eastern Europe. Each side persists with its propaganda, and it is not easy to get a full picture of what is really going on.
While Russia has been leading the way in troop and equipment movements, Western sources are prone to more than a little exaggeration. We are persistently told that Russia has 100,000 troops massed on the border, but detail is lacking. It’s not clear what Russia’s routine basing is in that strategically important area – are there usually 10,000,20,000 or as many as 30,000 troops based there anyway? Some of the public sources indicate that many of the troops are at least 200km from Ukraine, but 100,000 massed on the border ready to strike sounds better.
To complicate matters, one of the most senior British politicians, the foreign secretary Liz Truss, announced on the radio on 26 January that there are “hundreds of thousands” of Russian troops ready to go. Was that a slip of the tongue or has the threat doubled overnight?
