Russia Ukraine news: Moscow says shelling from Ukraine destroyed border facility as invasion tensions soar

Russia Ukraine news: Moscow says shelling from Ukraine destroyed border facility as invasion tensions soar


Russia Ukraine news: Moscow says shelling from Ukraine destroyed border facility as invasion tensions soar
Image Source : AP

A Ukrainian serviceman leaves a coomand post to start his shift at a frontline position outside Popasna, in the Luhansk region, eastern Ukraine.

Highlights

  • Russia said that shell fired from Ukraine had destroyed border facility of Russian Federal Security.
  • At least 150,000 Russian troops are deployed outside Ukraine’s borders, along with tanks.
  • Western nations have threatened massive sanctions if Putin invades Ukraine.

Amid growing tensions and the West’s fears about an invasion on Ukraine, Russian authorities on Monday said that a shell fired from Ukraine had destroyed a border facility of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), reported news agency AFP.

“On February 21, at 9:50 am (0650 GMT), an unidentified projectile fired from Ukraine completely destroyed a border facility used by the FSB border guard service in the Rostov region around 150 meters from the Russian-Ukrainian border,” news agency AFP reported, quoting a statement by the security service  carried by Russian news agencies.

 

Russia’s action extends what it said were military exercises, originally set to end Sunday, that brought an estimated 30,000 Russian forces to Belarus, Ukraine’s neighbor to the north. They are among at least 150,000 Russian troops now deployed outside Ukraine’s borders, along with tanks, warplanes, artillery and other war materiel.

The continued deployment of the Russian forces in Belarus raised concern that Russia could send those troops to sweep down on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, a city of about 3 million people less than a three-hour drive away.

 

A U.S. official said Sunday that Biden’s assertion that Putin has made the decision to roll Russian forces into Ukraine was based on intelligence that Russian front-line commanders have been given orders to begin final preparations for an attack. 

The United States and many European countries have charged for weeks that Putin has built up the forces he needs to invade Ukraine — a westward-looking democracy that has sought to move out of Russia’s orbit — and is now trying to create pretexts to invade.

Western nations have threatened massive sanctions if Putin does.

(ap inputs)

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