Kim Sengupta
Wed, February 16, 2022, 2:09 p.m.
A Russian attack on Ukraine would mean “body bags returning to Moscow” and the blame for the ensuing carnage “will be laid squarely at the feet of Vladimir Putin”, a senior US official has warned.

The Ukrainian military is far stronger than it was during the war between the Kiev government and Kremlin backed-separatists in 2014 and would be “capable of exacting a bloody toll” if there was a Russian invasion and occupation, said counselor to the US State Department, Derek Chollet.

Mr Chollet is among the western officials who maintain that the pull out of some forces by Moscow was not a genuine move to defuse the ongoing confrontation: “In fact we are seeing signs of further escalation in terms of positioning of forces that’s going on”, said Mr Chollet, one of the senior figures driving US administration policies in the crisis.

“We are continuing to see evidence that Russia is going to launch a ‘false-flag’ or some kind of sabotage operation to provide a pretext for military actions in Ukraine” he said. “This is a tried and true attempt by Russia we’ve seen over the years to try and fool us, and we’re not going to be fooled by them.”

https://ca.yahoo.com/news/russia-invading-ukraine-mean-body-190919534.html