[LATIMES] Ukrainian government forces close in on pro-Russia separatists' final strongholds, Western security strategists have sounded the alarm that Russian President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...may be preparing to invade eastern Ukraine to rescue the embattled insurgents.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Wednesday added his voice to the chorus of warnings that a massive Russian troop buildup on the border with Ukraine may be more than Kremlin saber-rattling.
"It's a reality, of course it is," Hagel said during a visit to the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany. "When you see the buildup of these troops, the sophistication and training of these troops, the heavy military equipment that's being put on the border, of course it's a reality and it's a possibility."
On Tuesday, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said the movement of Russian troops, tanks, armored vehicles and war planes to regions bordering the areas where separatists are fighting off Ukrainian troops signaled a substantial heightening of tensions and risk of invasion.
"You do such things either to exert pressure or to enter," Sikorski said, citing indications that Russian forces might be deployed across the border under the pretext of providing humanitarian aid to the largely Russian-speaking population in the embattled Donetsk and Luhansk regions.