In several of those videos, units from the southern and western military districts were asked to withdraw from Crimea after completing their exercises there. Traffic on the east side of the bridge over the Kerch Strait consisted of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and fuel trucks, supporting units.
“The Southern Military District troops, who have completed their tasks as part of a planned tactical exercise on the combined arms border on the Crimean peninsula, have begun to return to their permanent deployment points,” the ministry said on Tuesday.
But the two units that left, according to the Russian newspaper Izvestia, were elements of the 3rd and 150th Motor Rifle Divisions. They are located close to Ukraine in Rostov-on-Don and Belgorod, a short drive from the border. When those units get home, they will be closer to Ukraine than Crimea.
Other Russian footage from Tuesday – including drone shots – showed the detailed departure of T72 tanks from an undisclosed rural area.
CNN geolocated the location to a training ground near Otreshkovo, a Russian village about 120 kilometers (about 75 miles) from the border. But the direction in which the tank convoy was going is not decisive.
The video shows the tanks heading in two different directions towards a railway station and training ground.
The next day, the Defense Ministry posted more video of the same unit being loaded onto a train – and then later in the night published another video of the train rumbling on the east side. Its destination is unknown.
Russian diplomats have seized on the Defense Ministry’s declared pull-back to accuse the West of frenzy of increasing the threat of invasion.
Russia’s ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, told the German newspaper Die Welt on Wednesday that “there will be no attacks on Wednesday, next week, neither in the coming weeks nor in months.”
For the United States and NATO, the jury is still out. US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that the US has estimated that there are about 150,000 Russian forces around Ukraine.
NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg agreed, saying, “Just that we see the movement of forces, so the battle tanks, don’t confirm the actual withdrawal. It’s been a little up and down, all the way back and forth.
But over the past weeks and months there has been a steady increase in Russian capabilities close to the borders of Ukraine.”
CNN – along with several independent experts – continues to monitor and geograph social media content emerging from Russia and Belarus that shows its military on the move.
The evidence at hand is that a lot of Russian armor is close to the Ukrainian border – and some of it is still coming close.
According to multiple reviewed videos, on Wednesday, T90 tanks were filmed walking through mud in Tomarovka, a village in Russia’s Belgorod region, a few miles from the border with Ukraine.
In the nearby village of Veselaya Lopan, satellite imagery shows a new temporary military camp.
And in the past week, more helicopters – for both combat and transport – have arrived in Crimea and areas close to Ukraine’s eastern border, according to satellite imagery reviewed by CNN.
Those helicopters will provide vital air support to any ground attack.
New satellite imagery also shows a curious development in southern Belarus about six kilometers (about four miles) from the Ukrainian border and close to the Chernobyl exclusion zone. A long pontoon bridge has been built over the Pripyat river in the past few days, not far from the site where Belarus and Russian forces are conducting extensive joint exercises.
While there is little military activity in the immediate area, the bridge will dramatically cut the time needed to reach the Ukrainian border and avoid population centers. An additional satellite image from Planet Labs also shows that after January 8, a new road was built that leads to the bridge.
Western intelligence and military officials are closely monitoring the construction as part of a support infrastructure Russia is building before a potential invasion, three sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Nevertheless, past exercises in the field have involved building pontoons, which exposes a well-known dilemma in intelligence capture: how to reconcile rising and changing capabilities with unknown intent.
Another as yet unexplained development: Maxar had previously seen the installation of a large contingent of Russian forces – including tanks – near a town in southeastern Belarus, about 30 miles from the border.
Those forces appear to have dispersed, says Maxer, “today’s imagery of a military convoy moving west.”
Analysts say it will take at least several days to establish whether there is a real reduction of Russian forces from temporary positions around Ukraine, or – as many Western officials believe – it is more maneuverable.
The Conflict Intelligence Team, which has long experience tracking Russian military movements, told CNN: “We are currently unable to confirm or deny any actual withdrawal. We’ve seen vehicles from the Southern Military District’s 58th Army loading into trains in Crimea (where they previously deployed undisclosed), but we’ll need some additional time and evidence to say whether they were really theirs. Going back to permanent bases. ,
Konrad Muzyka, an analyst at Rochan Consulting, an aerospace and defense consultancy, said in a tweet: “The previously announced evacuation meant the deployment of more Russian troops near Ukraine. New trains keep coming with the equipment. The return would be a welcome event, but recent history tells us that these announcements are not real. Requires a few days to verify. ,
In January and early February, dozens of social media videos showed Russian forces moving toward Ukraine’s borders almost every day. So far, there has been no buoyancy in the material showing those forces moving in the opposite direction.