KYIV, March 30 – The U.S. military’s European Command has raised its watch to the highest level in response to a buildup of Russian forces on the border with Ukraine, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Gen. Tod D. Wolters, the head of U.S. European Command, raised the watch level from ‘possible crisis’ to ‘potential imminent crisis’ responding to the deployment of the additional Russian troops.

Russia has been significantly increasing the number of troops on the border with Ukraine over the past days. Russia may have already deployed up to 25 additional battalion tactical groups – about 30,000 troops – that now “poses a threat to the security of the state,” Ruslan Khomchak, the Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told Parliament on Tuesday.

Russia already has 32,000 soldiers in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula that Moscow has annexed in 2014, and about 28,000 troops in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. After recently adding more troops, Russia may soon be able to control up to 100,000 troops along the border with Ukraine.

Russia has also recently delivered about 19,000 metric tons of fuel, 335 metric tons of ammunition, 35 heavy trucks, 3 tanks and multiple rocket launchers and special equipment to Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Khomchak said.

This comes as NATO fighter jets scrambled 10 times on Monday to shadow Russian bombers and fighters during an unusual peak of flights over the North Atlantic, North Sea, Black Sea and Baltic Sea. In all, NATO aircraft intercepted six different groups of Russian military aircraft near Alliance airspace in less than six hours, according to a separate statement from NATO.

Russia explained the troop buildup by military exercises West-2021, which had concluded on March 23. The Russian troops were supposed to leave the area after the exercise, but they had failed to do so. Moscow used similar tactic previously before attacking Ukraine in 2014 and Georgia in 2008.

“This could be posturing, but the Kremlin is testing the new [Biden] administration,” said Frederick B. Hodges, a retired lieutenant general and a former top U.S. Army commander in Europe.

Russia has “zero interest” in a real peace for Ukraine, and wants to keep the country as destabilized as possible, said General Hodges, who is now with the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe negotiated the cease-fire in July, and it had held longer than dozens of others reached over the past seven years. Eight cease-fires have broken down since 2018 alone.

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have also escalated along the de facto border between the two countries at the isthmus of the Crimean Peninsula, which is to the south and west of the Line of Contact, and which was annexed by Russian forces in 2014.

In February, the Russian military announced rehearsals of paratrooper drops in Crimea that commentators in Russia and Ukraine saw as possibly telegraphing a fresh Russian incursion. The target this time: water canals supplying Crimea from the Dnieper River in Ukraine.

Ukraine cut off the supply of water from the river when Russia annexed the peninsula. Since then, water has been so scarce that a majority of residents in Crimea do not have round-the-clock supplies, according to the Interfax news agency. Most towns ration supplies by turning off water mains except for brief windows in the mornings and evenings. (nyt/ez)