The US continues to see Russia making maneuvers in the field that are consistent with preparations to invade Ukraine, two officials say

The US continues to see Russia making moves in the field that are consistent with preparations to invade Ukraine, two US officials told CNN on Monday.

One US official familiar with the latest intelligence says military preps continue unabated, there has been “no slow down.”

Those “tactical indicators” that Russian forces in the field are doing, are what they would be doing “if they were told to invade,” another US official said. The US is now looking for the “larger actions” beyond field activity that would indicate upcoming kinetic activity on a wider scale, the official said.  

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 The sources cautioned that orders can always be withdrawn or that it could be misinformation meant to confuse and mislead the US and allies.

On Sunday CNN reported that 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.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that a Russian attack on Ukraine could begin “in the coming hours or days” and would be “extremely violent.” 

It was a dramatic video, widely shared when it appeared last Friday by Telegram channels sympathetic to Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

It supposedly showed a barrage of gunfire and shelling by Polish-speaking saboteurs trying to blow up a chlorine tank near the city of Horlivka a week earlier — on February 11. Horlivka is in territory controlled by the separatists of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic.

The press service of the People’s Militia of the DPR picked it up and claimed that the saboteurs were killed and the video was recovered from their bodies. 

However, metadata from the video file reveals a creation date of February 8, ten days before it was shared on Telegram, a CNN analysis shows. And three days before the alleged date of the attack.

The messaging platform preserves metadata for the videos posted there and it cannot be changed.

But that is not all. Another section of the metadata — called a “pantry creator tool” — revealed that Adobe Premiere Pro was used to edit the video using different assets — called “ingredients” — from a separate repository.

“It seems to be a composed video, meaning that it is a collection of several assets, for example, when you add audio to a video or build a collection of smaller clips, images etc.,” said Givi Gigitashvili, research associate at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. 

“The ingredients file path of this particular video contains a name ‘2021-02-04 ВИДЕО-ЗАПИСЬ ДРГ(+).mp4,’ which may indicate that some ingredients are from 2021,” he added. 

The location of that and other video assets also has “2021” and “February 2” as names for project folders, again suggesting that the original timeframe dates back to last year. 

Among these assets, also in the Pantry section of the metadata, is a filename “M72A5 LAW and AIPLAS live fire.mp4.”

As first noticed by Eliot Higgins, founder and creative director of Bellingcat, the filename corresponds to a YouTube video with the same name, featuring explosions and gunfire at a location in Finland. 

CNN asked Rob Maher, an audio forensics expert at Montana State University, to analyze the media assets. He compared the boom sequence audio from one of the shots in the YouTube video with similar audio in the Telegram video. 

“The sequence of booms is remarkably similar in timing,” Maher concluded. “For the particular boom I compared, the timing is not exactly identical, but it is inexplicably similar.”

According to Maher, in order for the boom sequences in both videos to be that similar, “the geometrical relationship between the artillery piece, target, and microphone would have to be the same” — meaning that they would have to be in the exact same position in both videos. 

If the geometry was different “the relative time of arrival of the various boom sounds would be different” because the boom sound would propagate at different speeds to the microphone. 

“It seems pretty unexpected and coincidental that those acoustic arrival times would be so similar in these two ‘unrelated’ videos,” Maher concluded. “If the assertion is that the separatists’ video contains edited sound, this might be one explanation.”

Maher’s findings are corroborated by other sound designers and experts on Twitter such as Ciaran Walsh, who compared the spectral analysis of the explosions in the two videos, and arrived at similar conclusions. 

“I think (there’s) plenty of evidence indicating that audio is added from that YouTube video,” Gigitashvili said. 

It is not the first time that separatists have been seen posting questionable videos on Telegram. A CNN analysis of the Friday video statements by the leaders of the DPR and Luhansk People’s Republic revealed that the footage was recorded 2 days earlier.

The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine has accused Russian authorities of “deliberate provocation” after Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed on Monday that a shell fired from Ukrainian territory had destroyed a border guard post in Russia’s southern Rostov region.

“The statement of the Russian Federation FSB about the shelling from the territory of Ukraine — as a result of which the duty location of the border guards of the Russian Federation was destroyed — is a deliberate provocation,” Ukraine’s State Border Guard said Monday. 

“In particular, the exact place where it took place is not specified, except mentioning 150 meters from the Russian-Ukrainian border within the Rostov region,” the statement added. 

The FSB is Russia’s main domestic security agency and oversees Russian state border defense.

On Monday it said “an unidentified shell fired from the territory of Ukraine completely destroyed” a border control station about 150 meters from the border.

CNN was not able to independently verify the incident or the point of origin of any shellfire. 

The head of Ukraine’s National Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov, asserted that Ukraine has “nothing to do with these attacks.”

“Our military can only fire back if there is a threat to the lives of our military. We are not shelling,” Danilov said. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a large meeting of the Russian Security Council on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a call with journalists on Monday.

When asked if this was an emergency meeting or a regular one, Peskov said that it is “not regular,” refusing to elaborate further on the agenda of the meeting.

Peskov said the situation at the border remains “extremely tense” and refused to comment on the possibility of Russia providing military assistance to Donbas if requested.

Europe remains poised for a potential Russian invasion and Western leaders have warned that one remains imminent.

Earlier on Monday, Ukraine’s defense minister Oleksii Reznikov said the country is not witnessing the withdrawal of Russian forces from positions close to the Ukrainian border.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to “not play with human lives” in Ukraine on Monday, at the beginning of another week of tense diplomacy in Europe.

“I am appealing insistently to the Russian government, to the Russian President: Do not play with human lives!” Baerbock said in Brussels on arrival to the European Foreign Affairs Council meeting.

“The truly irresponsible game with the civil society and with people in the occupied areas – on both sides – is irresponsible,” she added. 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is expected to speak with Putin on Monday as part of continued diplomatic efforts to find a resolution to the ongoing Ukraine crisis. The call was announced by German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit during a press briefing in Berlin on Monday.

“The attacks, the violent conflict we have experienced in the last 72 hours is really alarming, the ceasefire is being interrupted repeatedly and people’s lives are highly threatened because of disrupted water and power supplies,” Baerbock said. 

EU Foreign Affairs Chief Josep Borrell told reporters on Monday that the EU would present “sanctions at the right moment.”

“I will call for the extraordinary meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council, and I will present the sanctions at the right moment … we are ready to do that when the moment comes,” he said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier told Germany’s ARD public television that Russia would “in principle be cut off from the international financial markets” if it invades Ukraine again.

“The crisis was induced by Russia, that’s why Russia has to solve this crisis now. We can only solve this crisis at the negotiation table. It is a matter of our common security,” Baerbock reiterated at the European summit on Monday.

“It is absolutely important that we stand united as Europeans with our American friends,” she said.

Ukraine is not witnessing the withdrawal of Russian forces from positions close to the Ukrainian border, its defense minister Oleksii Reznikov said Monday.

“We are observing the Russian units, which number today 127,000 people on the ground component, and with the naval and aviation component 147,000 people,” Reznikov said Monday.

“We do not see a withdrawal and we are not talking about the number being reduced, because the units can be quickly returned to their previous places or transferred to another area.”

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry gave very similar figures last week. 

Its update comes as new satellite imagery collected by Maxar on Sunday shows intensified activity among Russian units close to Ukraine’s northeastern border, with units that were in garrisons appearing to take up field positions.

“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),” Maxar observed.

“Until recently, most of the deployments had been seen primarily positioned at or near existing military garrisons and training areas,” it said.

Reznikov added on Monday: “We do not underestimate the threat in any case, it is really high.”

The minister also broached the possibility that Russia might recognize the self-declared republics in eastern Ukraine as independent.

“If they recognize these terrorist groups, which call themselves republics, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, they will directly violate the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine,” he said. 

“It will mean that, in fact, this is a pretext for a potential invasion through the introduction of some peacekeepers or something like that, as they will call it.”

Last week, Russian lawmakers appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to recognize the breakaway republics in Donbas as independent. 

The Kremlin said after the vote it had no plans to recognize the two regions, stating: “No one remains indifferent to the fate of Donbas. But still, Russia has repeatedly declared that it remains committed to the Minsk package of measures, and that Russia is in favor of the implementation of the entire Minsk plan as soon as possible, in the sequence that exists.”

There are no “no concrete plans” for a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a call with journalists on Monday.

Biden has agreed in principle to talks, brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron, but the White House said Sunday it will go ahead only “if an invasion hasn’t happened.”

“A substantive understanding has been reached that it is necessary to continue dialogue at the ministers’ level. It is too early to talk about concrete plans for organising summits,” Peskov said during his briefing.

“Of course, we do not rule out that, if necessary, the presidents of Russia and US can make a decision at any time to have contacts, by telephone or in person. It will be their decision,” Peskov added.

If talks do transpire, they would represent a major diplomatic development at a time of frenzied negotiating. US officials have consistently said Biden is willing to engage with Putin, even as he prepares withering economic sanctions should another Russian invasion of Ukraine take place.

But like their Russian counterparts, American officials have downplayed the likelihood of the summit actually taking place, given what they say is the high probability that Putin could launch an invasion soon.

“We are always ready for diplomacy. We are also ready to impose swift and severe consequences should Russia instead choose war. And currently, Russia appears to be continuing preparations for a full-scale assault on Ukraine very soon,” Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement on Sunday night.

Only hours before news of the possible summit emerged — after late-night calls between Macron and Putin, and between the French President and Biden — the US warned it had intelligence suggesting that Putin had already given his field commanders orders to invade Ukraine.

If Russia invades Ukraine it would “in principle be cut off from the international financial markets,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Germany’s ARD public television late Sunday.

Measures would hit “all goods we make that Russia urgently needs to modernize and diversify its economy, where we are globally dominant and they have no replacement,” she added.

Russia’s “clear weak point” is an economy based on fossil fuel energy, she said, with two thirds of exports being oil, coal and gas.

She urged Russia to “come back to the negotiating table,” but affirmed that “if Putin picks a quarrel, we will answer with massive consequences.”

French European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune said a summit between the US and Russian presidents “will not happen before Thursday.”

He made the comments to French broadcaster LCI on Monday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is due to speak with his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, on Monday and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Thursday. 

Beaune described these meetings as “preparatory meetings” for a summit between the two presidents.

“We will see the situation” following those discussions, he said. 

The Russian and US leaders have agreed in principle to a bilateral meeting to discuss the tensions around Ukraine, following calls with French President Emmanuel Macron, including three hours of discussion with Putin, according to Beaune. 

“Diplomatic hope has been restored” by Macron, he said.