Blinkin: Russia’s actions against Ukraine are worrying

Last week, Ukraine stated that nearly 100,000 Russian soldiers had been massed to an area near the Russia-Ukraine border.

Both the heads of NATO and France have warned Moscow not to take aggressive measures. On Saturday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken commented on the developments:

We have real concerns about unusual Russian military activity on the border with Ukraine. We have real concerns about some of the rhetoric we’ve seen and heard from Russia as well as on social media, says Anthony Blinken during a visit to Senegal.

Blinken says concerns are shared by US allies, but he does not want to comment on whether US intelligence believes Russian President Vladimir Putin aims to annex new territories in Ukraine.

– We don’t know what President Putin’s intentions are. But we know what happened in the past, he says.

“We know the game by trying to point to some fictitious provocation from Ukraine or another country and then use it as an excuse to do what Russia has planned to do all along,” Blinken says.

Putin on Thursday accused Western countries of escalating the conflict in Ukraine by holding exercises in the Black Sea and flying bombers close to Russia’s borders.