The international community worries that Russia might bring in troops centered around Ukraine to invade.Since November 2021, Russia has concentrated more than 100,000 troops on the borders with Ukraine / screenshot

Investigators from the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) have received the first evidence of the deployment of Russian national guard troops to the south and west of the country.

This is stated in the new CIT material .

Bloggers managed to identify several videos posted on the social network at the end of January.

The captured footage showed echelons with special equipment typical of the VNG, in particular armored personnel carriers. One of the trains followed from Arkhangelsk to the south.

As the authors of the material explain, they saw the same thing in the summer of 2020, when, against the backdrop of protests in Belarus, a reserve of Russian Guard OMON forces were transferred to the borders on trucks without license plates. But then there were no armored personnel carriers.https://t.me/CITeam/2281?embed=1

Another motorcade was filmed in the Tula region – with Ural-4320 trucks and an armored car “Zvezda-v” (“paddy wagons”). The same technique was noticed on railway platforms in Petrozavodsk.

Another convoy of Russian Guard vehicles with armored vehicles “Ural-VV”, “Federal”, BTR-80 was identified on the border of the Oryol and Lipetsk regions – 215 km from the direct border with Ukraine. The column moved to the west.

According to CIT, 130 servicemen of the Russian Guard were transferred by Il-76 aircraft from Tomsk to Kursk due to the “tense situation on the border with Ukraine.” Investigators spotted this plane on Flightradar24 in the direction of Crimea.

“Such a transfer of the VNG is rather uncharacteristic. In the event of an attempted full-scale attack on Ukraine with at least a temporary occupation of the territory, the VNG can be used to control settlements and lines, as well as anti-partisan actions. At least some of the fighters could get similar experience on the territory of Syria,” – stated in the publication.

Since November 2021, Russia has concentrated more than 100,000 troops on the borders with Ukraine. The international community fears that the Kremlin will involve the army and equipment in a full-scale offensive.

With the new threat of Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, the US, Britain and the EU are working on tools to contain Putin’s intentions, in particular through the imposition of tough sanctions.

The United States and a number of European countries agreed to transfer military weapons to the Ukrainian army to protect the sovereignty of the state from a possible new Russian offensive.

(c)UNIAN 2022