The U.S. government has released new satellite pictures that it says shows Russian forces were still near the Ukrainian border in recent days, contradicting Russian assertions they had been withdrawn.
President Vladimir Putin announced last Wednesday that the troops had moved, but NATO and the U.S. both said they had seen no sign of a Russian withdrawal from the frontier.
NATO officials have previously estimated Russia has about 40,000 soldiers close to Ukraine's border, exacerbating the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.
The commercial satellite photos, published by the U.S. State Department and on the U.S. Mission to NATO's Twitter account, showed what appeared to be about 20 Russian helicopters at Belgorod, near the Ukrainian border, on May 9.
Alongside it, the U.S. government published another image of the same area on March 26, also showing helicopters. An earlier photograph, from March 22, showed no helicopters in the area.
A second satellite photograph, taken in the Rostov area on May 12, within 75 kilometers of the Ukraine border, showed what the U.S. government said was a group of Russian armored vehicles. The vehicles were also there in an earlier picture of the same area, dated March 23.
When NATO published similar satellite photographs in April showing a Russian military buildup near the Ukraine border, a Russian official disputed their authenticity, saying the images were from August last year.
The allegation was denied by NATO officials, who said the photographs were recent.
See also:
NATO Satellite Photos Show Russian Military Buildup Near Ukraine
