New satellite imagery shows Russian military equipment inching closer to Ukraine’s northern border in the past 24 hours as Moscow has ordered the deployment of troops into Ukraine’s self-declared republics along the country’s eastern border.
Radar imagery captured by Capella Space and analyzed by researchers at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies shows a new encampment of Russian military vehicles and tents in a forest 35 miles away from the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
“It’s 20 kilometers from the border, which means it’s in a position to move into Ukraine,” Jeffrey Lewis, director of Middlebury’s East Asia non told The Daily Beast.
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The U.S. has reportedly shared intelligence with European allies indicating that a possible Russian invasion could target not just Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv, but other cities, including Kharkiv, Odessa, and Kherson, Bloomberg reported on Sunday.
The imagery comes as Russian officials announced the deployment of troops farther east in the rebel-held so-called Luhansk and Donetsk “people’s republics” after the Kremlin recognized their declaration of independence on Monday.
The encampment seen in satellite imagery lies south of Belgorod, Russia, where satellite imagery released by Maxar Technologies and TikTok videos uploaded by locals have documented a steady stream of Russian military equipment building up over the past few days.
The vehicles lie just along European route E105, a highway that runs south from Norway, through Russia, Kharkiv and ends in Yalta, in Russian-occupied Crimea.
“These do look like military movements, the formations of the vehicles are consistent with what we’ve seen in other areas in Russia,” said Steven De La Fuente, a research assistant at Middlebury who reviewed the imagery for The Daily Beast.
“The first indication that something may have been moving in this area was in optical satellite imagery on February 15 but this is our first confirmation that Russian military vehicles are now present there.”
