US intelligence services believe that Russia is going to invade Ukraine in early 2022, Bloomberg reports. Historian and political scientist, program director of the Valdai International Discussion Club, Oleg Barabanov, expressed his point of view on the subject in a short interview with Pravda.Ru.
"The topic of the resumption of the large-scale war has been the talk of the day both in the media and on social networks throughout 2021. There were many statements made in spring about the resumption of the large-scale conflict in Ukraine. They even showed videos that allegedly proved Russia's military buildup near the borders with Ukraine. This topic went into the background some time later, probably as a result of the Putin-Biden summit, which made it possible to ease tensions," Barabanov said.
The political scientist noted that the situation aggravated in autumn.
"The topic of the resumption of the large-scale war in Ukraine started heating up again in autumn. One can hear it coming from mass media, social media and Western official structures. Maybe this is nothing but intimidation," the expert said.
He did not rule out that the topic of the large-scale war between Russia and Ukraine surfaced again before the next meeting of Russia and US presidents.
"The purpose of that is to up the game on the eve of another round of negotiations either in the Normandy format or in the Russian-American format, since Russia has been making attempts to arrange a meeting with Biden all autumn," Barabanov said.
Earlier, Bloomberg, citing its sources at US intelligence that Russia was going to attack Ukraine in early 2022 from three directions, including from the territory of Belarus.