The Build-Up of War

For almost a year, Russia has been moving troops closer to the border of Ukraine, claiming that his soldiers were participating in “training exercises.” Yet the soldiers never stopped coming, and by November, satellite image analysis from the US revealed at least 100,000 soldiers grouped in various camps along the Russian-Ukrainian border.

As Western countries began to ask Russian President Vladimir Putin about these troop movements, he became defensive. On December 17, he issued a warning to Western European countries to pull troops back from their borders with Ukraine and to not interfere with Russian affairs. While this clearly implied a future attack, the West believed that Russia was just using intimidation against Ukraine and wouldn’t make such a move while the pandemic was still thriving. President Biden said that he would have a phone conversation with Putin to talk about his concerns on January 26, but two days later, Putin told the press that his demands had not been addressed and that the West was not taking Russia seriously.

This rhetoric alarmed Biden, who sent 3,000 American troops to Ukraine in early February as a security force and a deterrent to a Russian invasion. Biden, French President Emmanual Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz all met with Putin in February to dissuade him from war, yet none of the talks were productive.