Pentagon: Russia has enough troops near Ukraine for invasion
WASHINGTON >> President Vladimir Putin of Russia has deployed the troops and military hardware needed to invade all of Ukraine, the Pentagon’s top leaders said Friday, as senior Defense Department officials warned that the tense standoff was leading the United States, its NATO allies and Russia into uncharted territory.
Russia has assembled more than 100,000 troops at Ukraine’s borders, the officials said, publicly confirming for the first time what intelligence analysts have described for weeks. Those troops, Pentagon officials said, have the ability to move throughout Ukraine, far beyond an incursion into only the border regions.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin described an array of Russian infantry troops, artillery and rockets assembled at the Ukrainian border, which he said “far and away exceeds what we would typically see them do for exercises.”
Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was more blunt: “I think you’d have to go back quite a while to the Cold War days to see something of this magnitude.”
Their comments came as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine called for calm, saying that talk of an invasion could cause panic and destabilize his country’s economy. But the Pentagon leaders, speaking at a news conference that was dominated by the unfolding crisis, presented a grim picture, and Defense Department officials and Russia experts have privately warned that a Russian invasion has the potential to start a conflict between Moscow and the West that could quickly escalate.
Even if NATO is not drawn into a wider conflict, invading Ukraine could bring carnage, Milley warned. “Given the type of forces that are arrayed,” he said, referring to the Russian troops and hardware at the border, “if that was unleashed on Ukraine, it would be significant, very significant, and it would result in a significant amount of casualties.”
He added: “You can imagine what that might look like in dense urban areas, along roads and so on and so forth. It would be horrific. It would be terrible. And it’s not necessary. And we think a diplomatic outcome is the way to go here.”
U.S. officials estimate that 35,000 Americans are in Ukraine, including 7,000 people who have registered with the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, the capital. While the State Department has advised Americans to leave the country and has ordered family members of embassy personnel to depart, Pentagon officials know well from their experience in Afghanistan over the summer that U.S. citizens often do not heed advice to leave.
Austin did not rule out the possibility that U.S. troops might be sent to Ukraine to evacuate Americans if Russia invades and there is combat in the streets of Kyiv. “Whatever task the United States military is called upon to accomplish, we will be prepared to do it,” he said when asked if U.S. troops would enter Ukraine to evacuate Americans.
Austin has put 8,500 U.S. troops on high alert for possible deployment to Eastern Europe, where most of them would join a NATO rapid response team of 30,000 to 40,000 troops. And while President Joe Biden has made clear that he has no intention of deploying U.S. troops to Ukraine to help fend off an invasion, he indicated this week that he might separately send additional troops to Eastern European allies that are worried about Russian advances.
“I think you’d have to go back quite a while to the Cold War days to see something of this magnitude.”
— Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff