Putin's NATO demand and the Ukraine build-up, as of 28 December 2021
A look back at the state of the crisis around Ukraine on 28 December 2021, four days after Russia's president demanded guarantees from NATO.
What was the state of the crisis around Ukraine on 28 December 2021? Four days earlier, on 24 December, Russian president Vladimir Putin had demanded that NATO guarantee it would not move its forces into Ukraine. He accused NATO and the U.S. of trying to send Ukraine and Russia into direct armed conflict.
The demand came against a military backdrop that had been growing for months. Russian forces first massed near the Ukrainian border and in Crimea in March and April 2021, the largest mobilisation since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The troops were partially withdrawn by June 2021, though the infrastructure stayed in place.
A second build-up began in October 2021, with more soldiers and deployments on new fronts. By December, more than 100,000 Russian troops were massed around Ukraine on three sides, including from Belarus in the north and Crimea in the south.
Russian officials meanwhile repeatedly denied that Russia planned to invade Ukraine. Those denials began in November 2021 and continued, according to later accounts, until 20 February 2022.
By 28 December 2021, then, the picture was of a large troop presence on Ukraine's borders, a public Russian demand directed at NATO, and official denials of any invasion plan.
