The United States claims that Russia has deployed 7,000 more soldiers on the border with Ukraine

The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, this Wednesday in Washington.SAUL LOEB (AFP)

The United States not only denies that Russia has withdrawn troops from the border with Ukraine, but also ensures that it has deployed 7,000 additional soldiers in recent days, as reported by a senior official in the Joe Biden government this Wednesday afternoon in a call with journalists.

Some of the troops, according to Washington, have arrived in the last few hours, making it clear that the Kremlin is lying when it talks about de-escalation.

In total, NATO allies believe that Vladimir Putin has accumulated up to 150,000 soldiers in the border area with the former Soviet republic - compared to around 100,000 sent a few weeks ago - which has triggered fears of an invasion and has caused the moment of greatest tension since the end of the Cold War.

This week, something seemed to have moved in the negotiations behind the scenes: Moscow maintained that it was withdrawing forces;

Ukraine referred to its entry of the Defense Alliance - one of the elements in question - as a mere "dream" and the Western allies spoke of "cautious optimism".

However, this Wednesday the United States, the United Kingdom and NATO have questioned the Russian promises.

The memory of the illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, which seemed to have caught the West with a changed step, weighs heavily on mistrust and Washington has chosen this time to report almost every minute of each piece of intelligence information it collects. about Putin's alleged intentions.

“The Russian government said that it would withdraw troops from the border with Ukraine.

They received a lot of attention for that statement, both here and around the world;

but now we know that it was false, ”said the source of the US Administration this Wednesday.

"We have confirmed that in recent days, Russia has increased its presence along the border with Ukraine with up to 7,000 troops as recently as today."

The data emerged after a day in which official spokesmen had already questioned Putin's intentions hours before.

"Unfortunately, there is a difference between what Russia says and what Russia does," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview on ABC.

“What we are seeing is not any significant withdrawal, on the contrary, we continue to see forces built up on the border, especially forces that would be at the forefront of any new aggression against Ukraine,” he added.

"You can pull the trigger today, you can do it tomorrow," he stressed.

The spokesman for his Department, Ned Price, had spoken along the same lines, in more detail: “We have seen the opposite in recent weeks, even in recent days.

There are more Russian forces, not fewer, on the border,” he said.

These forces, he continued, "are worryingly moving into fighting positions."

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who has called for caution at all times, distressed by the blockade and the crisis in which his country may plunge due to uncertainty, agreed that there were no tangible signs of withdrawal, only "declarations" .

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