Three thousand extra US troops "won't scare Putin"

Russia will not be scared of America’s deployment of 3,000 reinforcement troops to eastern Europe, a former top British and Nato commander has warned. “I mean, 3,000? Frankly you can imagine Mr Putin sitting in the Kremlin and raising an eyebrow and saying, ‘that’s really going to frighten me’,”General Sir Richard Shirreff told Times Radio. The former deputy supreme allied commander Europe who has warned n the past of the urgent need to boost defences in eastern Europe, was reacting to President Biden’s decision to send extra troops to Poland and Romania. Calling on the West to show “real resolve”, Shirreff said “significant ready forces” should be sent to the Baltic states and to northeast Romania to send a message to Moscow that “absolutely no way is any Russian boot going to step across into Nato territory”. “And if it does, we’re prepared to fight to defend ourselves,” he said. “This is a very, very dangerous situation, arguably the most dangerous situation Europe has faced since the Cuban missile crisis [in 1962],” he warned.. Shirreff, 66, served in the 1991 Gulf war and in Iraq . In 2007 he was appointed commander of the allied rapid reaction corps. Since his retirement he has written a fictional account of a war with Russia over the Baltics. As he dismissed Biden’s limited troop deployments to eastern Europe, new satellite images have revealed that Russian high-readiness battle groups are now located in at least six locations in western Russia, Crimea and Belarus. An estimated total of around 75 Russian army battalion tactical groups (BTGs), each with 1,000 troops with support units attached are now deployed at three locations in western Russia, two in Crimea and one in Belarus, according to the imagery collected and analysed by Maxar Technologies, based in Colorado. The presence of tents, shelters and housing at the sites indicates that the BTGs are at full strength and have the backing of tanks, artillery, armoured personnel carriers and Iskander short-range ballistic missiles. The 9K720 Iskander-M, known by Nato as the SS-26 Stone, is seen deployed at Osipovichi near Mogilev in Belarus. They have a range of 500 kilometres (310 miles). Mogilev to Kyiv is around 240 miles flying time. The new satellite pictures show that Russia is continuing a steady build-up of forces with the Russian army’s most capable units spread out around the Ukrainian border and deployed for a potential triple-flank intervention. One of the key locations, the images show, is at Yelnya in western Russia where elements of the 41st Combined Arms Army, normally garrisoned 2,000 miles away at Novosibirsk in Siberia, are now gathered about 150 miles north of the Ukrainian border. The huge build-up of forces at Yelna include a battalion of Iskander ballistic missiles as well as rocket launchers and tanks. Despite the distance between Yelna and the Ukrainian border, the battle-ready forces could move rapidly southwards or even divert through Belarus to threaten Kyiv. Other units are much closer to the border, including an artillery training area at Persianovsky in western Russia, only 30 miles from Ukraine. Maxar said the new satellite images reflected an “increased level of activity and readiness “. Live-fire artillery and manoeuvre exercises can be seen in progress at numerous training areas. The Russian army’s BTGs can be spotted at Yelnya, Pogonovo and Kursk in western Russia, at Bakhchysarai and Yevpatoria in Crimea, and at Obuz-Lesnovsky in Belarus. The satellite images were taken on February 1.