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(Reuters) - NATO unveiled satellite photographs on Thursday it said showed Russian deployments of some 40,000 troops near the Ukrainian frontier, along with long lines of tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and aircraft ready for action. "This is a force that is very capable, at high readiness, and, as we have illustrated through the imagery, is close to routes and lines of communication," British Brigadier Gary Deakin said at a briefing at NATO military headquarters at Mons in southern Belgium. "It has the resources to be able to move quickly into Ukraine if it was ordered to do so," he said. If Russian political leaders took a decision to send forces into Ukraine, the first Russian forces could be on the move within 12 hours. NATO has spotted Russian forces at more than 100 different sites close to the Ukraine border, he said. The Western alliance displayed the commercial satellite images to reporters as evidence to back up its warnings of a Russian military buildup that could threaten Ukraine. Russia denies massing forces near the border and accuses NATO of fomenting concern to rally support for the alliance.
www.newsweek.com...
An official in the Russian military general staff said the NATO satellite photographs were taken in August 2013, state-run news agency RIA reported.
"These photographs that were distributed by NATO depict units of Russian forces of the Southern Military District which conducted various exercises last summer, some of them near the border with Ukraine," RIA quoted what it said was a high-level official in the Russian general staff as saying.
A NATO official responded that the images were from March and April this year and each image showed the date it was taken.
chrismarco
reply to post by TritonTaranis
I'm not feeling the Russian Nuclear Bomber planes...no reason for them to be there militarily speaking..not even for a show of force...I'm not buying that description..
I stand corrected they do appear to be nuclear bombersedit on 10-4-2014 by chrismarco because: (no reason given)
InvisibleOwl
This could be true and if it is, it's of some concern. I am unwilling to trust the word of NATO that these pictures are legitimate. Anyone remember Iraq building up troops along the Saudi border in 1990 (except it was a lie)?
In early January, Hussein's troops began to withdraw from Kuwait, but the Pentagon claimed to have satellite photographs showing an enormous buildup of Iraqi forces and weapons, 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1500 tanks massing in the desert for their impending attack on Saudi Arabia. This announcement stunned the anti-war protesters, and world opinion gradually shifted, although no one saw the alleged photos, which were, of course, classified.
Jean Heller, an ace journalist from the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, persuaded her editors to buy two photos from the Russian commercial satellite, the Soyuz Karta, taken September 11 and September 13. The photos proved that the entire Iraqi airforce was parked in Riyadh and that Iraqi troops were nowhere to be found massing in the desert. The editors asked two former Defense Intelligence Agency analysts to examine the photos. They, too, were surprised that the pictures showed American jets arrayed on the Saudi Arabian border but no troops at all on the Kuwaiti border.
Peter Zimmerman, a satellite expert at George Washington University, said,
"We could see clearly the main road leading right through Kuwait, south to Saudi Arabia, but it was covered with sand banks from the wind and it was clear that no army had moved over it. We could see empty barracks where you would have expected these thousands of troops to be billeted, but they were deserted as well."
Then a strange thing happened. Major news organizations, including Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, and ABC, perused the photos but decided not to publish a story that would contradict the government's information. The Iraqi military buildup, which did not exist, was Bush's justification for dispatching troops, yet the American media refused to expose the government's lie. The only honest American journalists were in St. Petersburg, Florida.
After the war, the House Armed Services Committee concluded that at the beginning of the ground war in February, the Iraqi troops numbered 183,000, not the 250,000 "discovered" by the Pentagon satellite.
The alleged Pentagon satellite photos are still classified.
Phage
reply to post by kloejen
The difference being, that well...there are the pictures. Whereas with Iraq, they didn't produce any pictures.
And, btw, these pictures are from a commercial satellite.
Skynet is a family of military satellites, now operated by Astrium Services on behalf of the UK Ministry of Defence, which provide strategic communication services to the three branches of the British Armed Forces and to NATO forces engaged on coalition tasks.
InvisibleOwl
This could be true and if it is, it's of some concern. I am unwilling to trust the word of NATO that these pictures are legitimate. Anyone remember Iraq building up troops along the Saudi border in 1990 (except it was a lie)?
The supposed image information is from the US Skynet satellites, which feeds Nato.
The photographs were taken by commercial satellite imaging company Digital Globe.
This thing is that the US have previously been deceitful, regarding satellite imagery.
So why trust them now ?
Phage
reply to post by kloejen
The difference being, that well...there are the pictures. Whereas with Iraq, they didn't produce any pictures.
And, btw, these pictures are from a commercial satellite.
Sure they did....remember the "mobile chemical weapons labs?? Also some various other photos I remember that Collin Bowel standing beside
Phage
1) It isn't US government imagery
Phage
2) It isn't coming from the US
DigitalGlobe (NYSE: DGI), of Longmont, Colorado, United States, is a commercial vendor of space imagery and geospatial content, and operator of civilian remote sensing spacecraft.
Phage
3) It puts the Kremlin in a tough spot
I remember it well. I remember thinking, "What? Did he really say that?"
Sure they did....remember the "mobile chemical weapons labs?? Also some various other photos I remember that Collin Bowel standing beside