Don’t Trust, Verify: That’s the unofficial mantra of Western officials in response to Russian claims that some of its units that have been encircling Ukraine are returning to base.

Russia appears poised to prove those claims to the world through well-produced videos distributed by the Defense Ministry on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In several of those videos, units from the Southern and Western Military Districts were said to be returning to the base from Crimea after completing their exercises there. Traffic heading east across the bridge over the Kerch Strait included tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and fuel trucks, supporting the units.

Shot from multiple angles, the videos were designed to reinforce what the Kremlin has insisted all along: that an invasion of Ukraine is not and has never been on its agenda.

“The troops of the Southern Military District, who have completed their tasks as part of the planned tactical exercises at the combined-arms firing ranges on the Crimean peninsula, have started to return to their permanent deployment points,” the ministry said on Thursday. Tuesday.

But two of the units that left, according to the Russian newspaper Izvestia, were elements of the 3rd and 150th Motorized Rifle Divisions. They are based near the Ukraine, in Rostov-on-Don and Belgorod respectively, a short distance from the border. When those units return home, they will be closer to Ukraine than they were to Crimea.

Other Russian footage on Tuesday – including drone footage – showed the elaborate exit of T72 tanks from an unidentified rural area.

Citizen Free Press geolocated the location to a training camp near Otreshkovo, a Russian town about 120 kilometers from the border. But the direction of the departing tank convoy is far from conclusive.

The video shows the tanks heading in two different directions, both to a train station and to the training ground.

The next day, the Ministry of Defense released more videos of the same unit being loaded onto a train – and then released another video of the train rumbling east at night. His fate is unknown.

Russian diplomats have used the declared withdrawal of the Ministry of Defense to accuse the West of hysteria by raising the threat of an invasion.

Russia’s ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, told the German newspaper Die Welt on Wednesday that there will be no attack “not on Wednesday, not next week, not in the next few weeks, not in the next few months.”

For the United States and NATO, the jury is still out. US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that the United States believes there are about 150,000 Russian forces around Ukraine.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg agreed that “the mere fact that we see movement of forces, of tanks, does not confirm a real withdrawal. It has been a bit of ups and downs, back and forth at all times .

But the trend in recent weeks and months has been a steady increase in Russian capabilities near Ukraine’s borders.”

Citizen Free Press – along with a number of independent experts – continues to monitor and geolocate social media content emerging from Russia and Belarus that shows their military on the move.

The evidence we have is that many Russian tanks remain close to the Ukrainian border – and some of them continue to get closer.

On Wednesday, T90 tanks were filmed moving through sleet in Tomarovka, a village in Russia’s Belgorod region, just a few kilometers from the Ukrainian border, according to multiple videos reviewed.

And in the past week, more helicopters — both combat and transport — have arrived in both Crimea and areas near Ukraine’s eastern border, according to satellite images reviewed by Citizen Free Press.

Those helicopters would provide significant air support for any ground offensive.

The new satellite images also show a curious development in southern Belarus, about six kilometers (approximately four miles) from the Ukrainian border and also near the Chernobyl exclusion zone. In recent days, a long pontoon bridge has been built across the Pripyat River, not far from where Belarusian and Russian forces are conducting extensive joint exercises.

Satellite images taken over the past two days show the construction of a new road and a tactical bridge over a key river in Belarus, less than six kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

Both the newly built road and the bridge, which crosses the Pripyat River in southern Belarus, are less than 6 kilometers from the border and could be used by Russian forces currently in Belarus to head to Kyiv.

Although there is little military activity in the immediate area, the bridge would drastically reduce the time needed to reach the Ukrainian border and bypass population centers. An additional satellite image from Planet Labs also shows that a new road leading to the bridge was built after January 8.

Western military and intelligence officials are closely monitoring the construction as part of the supporting infrastructure Russia is putting in place ahead of a possible invasion, three sources familiar with the matter told Citizen Free Press.

However, previous exercises in the area have included pontoon construction, highlighting a well-known dilemma in intelligence gathering: how to reconcile growing and changing capabilities with unknown intentions.

Another still unexplained development: Maxar had previously observed the establishment of a large detachment of Russian forces – including tanks – near the city of in southeastern Belarus, some 30 miles from the border.

Those forces appear to have spread out, Maxar says, noting that a “military convoy was seen moving west in today’s footage.”

Russian forces, including tanks, appear to have dispersed from a camp near Rechytsa, Belarus. In one of the satellite images, a convoy of vehicles is seen moving west into Belarus.

Analysts say it will take at least several days to establish whether there is a real withdrawal of Russian forces from temporary positions around Ukraine, or whether – as many Western officials believe – more maneuvers.

The Conflict Intelligence Team, which has long experience tracking Russian military movements, told Citizen Free Press: “Currently we cannot confirm or deny that a real withdrawal is taking place. We have seen vehicles from the 58th Army of the Military District from the South being loaded onto trains in Crimea (where they had previously been deployed without warning), but we would need more time and evidence to say whether they are actually withdrawing to their permanent bases.

Konrad Muzyka, an analyst at Rochan Consulting, an aerospace and defense consultancy, said in a tweet: “Previously announced withdrawals meant more Russian troop deployments near Ukraine. New trains of equipment keep arriving. Withdrawal would be a welcome development, but recent history tells us these ads are not genuine. We need a few days to verify.”

In January and early February, dozens of videos on social media showed Russian forces heading towards Ukraine’s borders almost every day. So far, there hasn’t been a similar wave of content showing those forces moving in the opposite direction.

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