WASHINGTON, December 18. /TASS/. A situation with the allegedly massive presence of Russian military near the border with Ukraine remains unchanged, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told a daily press briefing.
"We continue to monitor the situation in Russia and Ukraine of course," Kirby said.
"We haven't seen any significant changes in the posture of Russian forces arrayed around the Ukrainian border," he continued. "They are still there in large number, and that's as far as I think I'm going to go."
Asked whether the United States and its NATO allies would bolster their presence in the eastern flank and about "possible new troop rotations anywhere in the world," Kirby said: "I have no new rotational deployments to speak to in terms of our NATO allies."
"We have a lot of capability in the region. That capability's still there," Kirby continued. "Some of it is fixed, some of it is rotational."
"As you heard Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor say,… if there's an incursion, another incursion, and if some of our NATO allies ask for additional capabilities or rotational elements, we will be positively disposed to consider that, but I have no such requests to speak to and no movements to speak to today," he noted.
Lately, in the West and Ukraine, the claims of an alleged possible Russian "invasion" into Ukrainian territory are being touted increasingly more often. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov branded such information as an empty and groundless escalation of tension, emphasizing that Russia does not represent a threat to anyone.
That said, he didn’t exclude the possibility of provocations being whipped up in order to justify such claims and warned that the attempts to resolve the problem in southeastern Ukraine through the use of force would have the most serious consequences.