Russia is preparing a “blitzkrieg” against Ukraine and imposing “nuclear blackmail” on the West in a bid to re-create the USSR.
A shocking dossier, leaked to the Daily Mirror, warns “pacifying” Russian President Vladimir Putin in current peace talks could risk sparking a world war.
It says Moscow is using them to boost its military build-up close to Ukraine’s border amid plans to “restore Russia in a hybrid status of USSR 2”.
And it warns Russia will use peace talks with the US in Geneva on Sunday as a smokescreen for “large scale military preparations around Ukraine’s borders”.
It is feared up to 175,000 Russian troops could be building up for a full-scale war with Ukraine, or a partial invasion.
These may include further bolstering and expanding ground already taken by pro-Russian separatists in disrupted Donetsk and Luhansk, in east Ukraine.
In 2014 Russia occupied Crimea in a near-overnight invasion, sparking war in eastern Ukraine.
Up to 14,000 have died in fighting between Ukraine’s military and pro-Russian separatists, secretly joined by Moscow forces.
The Mirror recently visited the 250-mile front line in east Ukraine where there are daily attacks on Ukraine’s troops.
Putin insists Moscow does not intend to invade Ukraine, but Russia also denied its troops were in Crimea in 2014.
The report by Ukraine intelligence, analysing Russian military training, shows “preparation for a modern blitzkrieg against Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries by strike units, airborne and special forces”.
It warns that pacifying Putin “could lead from the growth of Russian regional aggression to a real world war and is a real threat of western democracy destruction”.
It claims: “To neutralise western influence and create a trading space the Kremlin has chosen a strategy of nuclear blackmail, spreading local armed conflicts with elements of hybrid wars, intensifying espionage, provocations and sabotage, economic pressure and spreading global corruption among the so-called elite of the West.”
NATO will hold a meeting of foreign ministers this week to assess the crisis.
US President Joe Biden warned Moscow it could face new sanctions.
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