Satellite imagery shows Russian ground forces dispersing to positions close to the Ukraine border

New satellite imagery shows intensified activity among Russian units close to Ukraine’s northeastern border, with units that were in garrisons appearing to take up field positions.

The satellite images were collected by Maxar on Sunday.

Maxar assesses that “multiple new field deployments of armored equipment and troops have been observed northwest of Belgorod and near Soloti and Valuyki, Russia.”

These towns are within 35 kilometers (around 21 miles) of the Russian border with Ukraine.

Maxar observes, “This new activity represents a change in the pattern of the previously observed deployments of battle groups (tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and support equipment). Until recently, most of the deployments had been seen primarily positioned at or near existing military garrisons and training areas.”

“Today (Sunday) most of the combat units and support equipment at Soloti have departed and extensive vehicle tracks and some convoys of armored equipment are seen throughout the area.”

The images show that encampments or staging grounds that contained substantial forces last Sunday, February 13, are now relatively empty.

“Some equipment has also been deployed east of nearby Valuyki, Russia in a field approximately 15 kilometers north of the Ukraine border,” Maxar noted.

Separately, CNN has geolocated several videos from the region over the weekend that show long columns including tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and howitzers moving through rural areas in the Belgorod oblast (district).

“A number of new field deployments are also seen northwest of Belgorod (deployments are approximately 30 kilometers from the border with Ukraine) with much of the equipment and troops positioned in or near forested areas,” Maxar observed.

The images show extensive tracks where armor has moved across the countryside.

“Other company-sized units are deployed within farm and/or industrial areas.”

CNN has observed that some tanks and other vehicles in the area appears to have been marked with a large “Z” — suggesting they are being formed into a fighting unit.

The Ukrainian Joint Forces Command has alleged that Russian-backed separatists launched “heavy armament fire’ against their own territory in an effort to ‘falsely accuse’ the armed forces of Ukraine and further escalate the situation.”

It said the barrage began at 9 p.m. local time Sunday and involved firing from Lobacheve toward the city of Luhansk. Both places are within the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) in eastern Ukraine.

“With Ukrainian defenders refraining from any aggressive acts that could possibly trigger a violent response, the occupation forces continue to destroy civilian infrastructure on the temporarily occupied territories and sporadically shell civilian settlements,” the Command said.

“By doing so, the occupation forces once again demonstrated their cowardice and complete disregard for the lives and health of the local civilian population.”

For its part, the LPR alleged that Ukrainian forces were “firing artillery into the territory of the LPR along the entire line of contact, presumably they are preparing to attack.”

Ivan Filiponenko, an LPR official, said, “All along the line of contact, the enemy undertook preparations for an intended offensive.” 

The separatists have accused Ukraine of preparing for an offensive against the two self-declared republics, an accusation that has been denied by Ukraine.

On Saturday, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said it deplored “the spreading of disinformation about an imminent military action by the Ukrainian government forces.”

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke about the situation in Ukraine on Sunday, according to readouts from the United Kingdom and France.

In a readout of the call, the Élysée Palace said the two leaders updated one another on their diplomatic efforts involving Ukraine, including Macron’s call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, where France said the leaders agreed to hold trilateral talks to reach a ceasefire.

“The Prime Minister noted that President Putin’s commitments to President Macron were a welcome sign that he might still be willing to engage in finding a diplomatic solution. The Prime Minister stressed that Ukraine’s voice must be central in any discussions,” a Downing Street spokesperson said in a statement.

“The leaders agreed on the need for both Russia and Ukraine to meet their commitments under the Minsk Agreements in full. They also underscored the need for President Putin to step back from his current threats and withdraw troops from Ukraine’s border,” the Downing Street statement said.

Johnson and Macron agreed to stay in close contact over the next week.

The US has intelligence indicating orders have been sent to Russian commanders to proceed with an attack on Ukraine, according to two US officials and another source familiar with the US intelligence. 

The intelligence regarding the order to tactical commanders and intelligence operatives is one of several indicators the US is watching to assess if Russian preparations have entered their final stages for a potential invasion. 

Other indicators, such as electronic jamming and widespread cyber-attacks, have not yet been observed, according to some of the sources. The sources cautioned that orders can always be withdrawn or that it could be misinformation meant to confuse and mislead the US and allies.

But the news of the intelligence comes after President Biden said on Friday that he believes Putin has made a decision to invade — a comment echoed by Vice President Kamala Harris and by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday. Blinken said the Russian playbook is “moving forward.”

“We believe President Putin has made the decision,” Blinken said Sunday in an interview on CNN. “But until the tanks are actually rolling and the planes are flying, we will use every opportunity and every minute we have to see if diplomacy can still dissuade President Putin from carrying this forward.”

The Washington Post first reported on the orders being given.

CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis contributed to this report

President Joe Biden is expected to speak Sunday with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron following Macron’s back-to-back phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, a source familiar said.

The exact timing of the conversation wasn’t clear. 

Macron is working to find a diplomatic path to avoid conflict, as reflected in the Élysée readouts of his calls today. 

Biden’s Sunday National Security meeting regarding Ukraine has ended, per a White House official. The meeting began at 11:30 a.m., a White House official told CNN.

Some more context: French President Emmanuel Macron and Putin agreed on Sunday on “working intensively to enable a meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group to be held in the next few hours,” the Élysée Palace said in a readout of the call on Sunday.

The Élysée readout said the aim of the meeting would be to “obtain a commitment from all parties to a ceasefire on the line of contact.” 

The Trilateral Contact Group includes representatives from Ukraine, the Russian Federation, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Per the statement, the two leaders agreed on the need to “give priority to a diplomatic solution to the current crisis and to do everything possible to achieve it.”

Evacuees from separatist-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine continued to cross into Russia through a border checkpoint Sunday, entering the southern Rostov region by car, bus and by foot, a CNN reporter on the ground observed.  

At the Avila-Uspenka border checkpoint in the Rostov region, residents leaving Donbas were greeted by representatives of Russia’s Emergency Services Ministry and members of a pro-Putin youth group in a makeshift camp.  

The traffic coming out of Donetsk was moderate with families driving in cars with Donetsk People’s Republic license plates and occasional groups of evacuees trickling in small groups of two to four people, mostly families with young children.

One evacuee from the city of Donetsk told CNN that her family evacuated on short notice after hearing shellfire early Sunday morning. 

The local Russian emergency services set up makeshift cafeterias, toilets and showers, along with two rows of inflatable makeshift tents inside which some evacuees slept on bunk beds while waiting to be taken to other accommodation.  

Meanwhile, rows of empty buses waited to take the evacuees camps and sanatoriums in the nearby port city of Taganrog. 

“We left voluntarily, no one is making us leave and some people choose to stay,” said Viktor Ivanovich, 63, who gave only his first name and patronymic. He crossed the border with his wife in their car.  

When asked whether they were given instructions on when they might be able to come back, the couple said no.   

Local officials in the Rostov region have declared a state of emergency after separatist leaders on Friday ordered the evacuation of civilians from the region.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Russia’s Vladimir Putin agreed on Sunday on “working intensively to enable a meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group to be held in the next few hours,” the Élysée Palace said in a readout of the call on Sunday.

The Élysée readout said the aim of the meeting would be to “obtain a commitment from all parties to a ceasefire on the line of contact.” 

The Trilateral Contact Group includes representatives from Ukraine, the Russian Federation, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Per the statement, the two leaders agreed on the need to “give priority to a diplomatic solution to the current crisis and to do everything possible to achieve it.”

The French presidency said that “intense diplomatic work” would be carried out “in the coming days and weeks,” with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov to meet soon.

The two leaders “noted differences in interpretation of the reasons for the deadlock” in the negotiations over the Ukraine crisis, an Elysee source said.

The Élysée Palace said that diplomatic work “should make it possible to progress on the basis of the latest exchanges by associating all stakeholders,” in order to reach “a meeting at the highest level with a view to defining a new peace and security order in Europe.”

It added that Macron and Putin had made “firm commitments to take all useful actions to avoid escalation, reduce risks and preserve peace” to carry out this work “under serious conditions.”

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby doubled down on the Biden administration’s strategy of using the threat of sanctions as a deterrent and rejected increased calls for imposing pre-invasion sanctions, saying, “[Russian President Vladimir Putin] has not conducted another invasion in Ukraine yet, and we still think there’s time to prevent that.”

Kirby said on Fox News Sunday that Putin still has many options on the table if he chooses to take a diplomatic off-ramp to the tensions, saying, “We have made serious proposals and talked about changing, for instance, the scope and scale of some of our exercises in Europe, being willing to talk about offensive missile capabilities in Europe. We have certainly put forward other proposals to try to convince Mr. Putin that we’re serious.”

Kirby made clear the issue of Ukraine’s membership in NATO, however, is “an issue for Ukraine and for NATO. That is not something that Mr. Putin can simply institute a veto over or decide for himself, that kind of thing is again between the alliance and Ukraine.”

Some context: Kirby would not address individual claims made by Putin, but he characterized them as “outrageous claims” and said, on the whole, “these are just not credible.”

He said that Putin is “playing the victim,” which he said is exactly out of the “Russian playbook.”

“It is absolutely right out of the Russian playbook. He may be moving Xs and Os around the field right now militarily, but it seems like he’s using the same old playbook,” Kirby said, adding, “And I don’t want to make light of this analogy. This isn’t a football game. This is potentially war and lives are at stake here.” 

According to the latest US intelligence assessment, Russia now has close to 75% of its conventional forces postured against Ukraine, a US official with direct knowledge of the intelligence told CNN. 

The concentration of forces within striking distance of Ukraine is highly unusual and part of the reason the US believes Russia is ready to attack, the official said.

This includes some 120 of Russia’s total estimated 160 Battalion Tactical Groups or BTGs which are positioned within 60km of Ukraine, according to the official. While that figure represents 75% of Russia’s principal combat units, it is less than half of the total troops in the Russian military.

US officials have reported that Russian troops combined with separatist forces could be as high as 190,000 deployed around Ukraine.

Some 35 of 50 known air defense battalions are deployed against Ukraine. In addition, the US estimates some 500 fighter and fighter-bomber aircraft are within range of Ukraine, as well as 50 medium to heavy bombers.

Together, the Russian forces now vastly outnumber Ukrainian military forces, according to the assessment. 

To note: CNN cannot independently verify the intelligence.

On Thursday, the British Ministry of Defense tweeted an assessment that said, “Russia has over half of its ground combat power near the Ukrainian border.”