Throughout Ukraine’s eastern civil war in 2014, officials were constantly claiming Russian invasions. Those claims dried up when the Russian-brokered ceasefire took hold, and even though no one ever saw the Russian troops leave, it wasn’t considered a big deal since no one ever seemed to be able to catch them on film at any rate.
When Ukraine decided to resume the war over the weekend, they decided to resume the allegations against Russia as well, claiming 700 troops were in Ukraine on Monday. As the war picked up, so did the claims, and now they’re saying 9.000 Russian troops are somewhere inside Ukraine.
Conspicuously absent from these claims are any solid evidence, as Ukraine continues to substitute footage of ethnic Russian rebels who are fighting them in the east for the swarm of military forces supposedly invading the country.
Russian officials reiterate that they don’t have any troops in Ukraine, and challenged the Ukrainian government to provide evidence of the putative invasion. They are also pushing for the resumption of the ceasefire.
