Putin adds more troops as he waits for Biden's call

On the eve of the phone call between President Biden and President Putin, the Pentagon revealed that the Russian military was continuing to add more and more firepower on the border with Ukraine. The US defence department which has long had contingency plans in the event of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, is still hoping for diplomacy to work so that the current build-up of tension “doesn’t result in any sort of open or armed conflict”, John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, said at a briefing. “[But] what we ...see is added capability that President Putin continues to add, added military capability in the western part of his country and around Ukraine,” Kirby said. One key component of the intelligence picture being drawn and redrawn each day at the Pentagon and at US European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, may be coming from an estimated dozen or so American military advisers in Ukraine. They were first sent on a rotational basis during the Obama administration and stayed during the Trump administration. “I don’t have specific numbers of advisers that may or may not be on the ground,” Kirby said. However, he confirmed there had been a longstanding rotational arrangement to make sure Ukraine could “continue to defend itself”. The Pentagon has recently provided Ukraine with Javelin anti-tank missiles and two refitted former US Coast Guard patrol boats to boost the Ukrainian navy, part of a package of military assistance worth more than $2.5 billion since 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and Russian-backed local proxy forces seized part of eastern Ukraine. The defence department is also considering providing the Ukrainian military with Soviet-made Mi-17 Hip helicopters which previously belonged to the Afghan air force. One version can be used as a gunship. The Afghans had a fleet of Mi-17s some of which were withdrawn by the US during the evacuation from Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. But many of the helicopters were captured by the Taliban.