Calls Russia's Military Activities On Ukrainian Borders Worrying, US Military Commander: We're Tracking Everything

Chairman of the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark A Milley. (Wikimedia Commons/US Secretary of Defense)

JAKARTA - The United States is tracking quite a number of indicators and warnings around Russian military activity near Ukraine, sparking "a lot of concern", the country's top military general said.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Mark Milley, declined to speculate on the types of options the United States might consider in the event of a Russian invasion. However, Milley in several of his statements about the crisis, stressed the importance of Ukrainian sovereignty for Washington and for the NATO alliance.

"There are significant national security interests of the United States and NATO member states at stake here, if there is a blatant act of military aggression by Russia to a nation state that has been independent since 1991," General Milley said on the flight from Seoul. to Washington, citing Reuters Dec. 3.

Ukraine says Russia has amassed more than 90,000 troops near their long border. Meanwhile, Moscow rejects the notion it is preparing an attack on Ukraine, defending its right to deploy troops on its own territory if it deems it necessary.

The Kremlin annexed Crimea's Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, then backed rebels battling Kyiv government forces in the east of the country. Kyiv says the conflict has killed about 14,000 people and is still burning.

Experts warn that Russia's unchallenged invasion could destabilize, creating a ripple effect far beyond Ukraine at a time of growing anxiety over China's intentions toward Taiwan.

However, General Milley declined to publicly state his estimates of Russian troop numbers near Ukraine, but suggested his concerns went beyond the raw Russian troop numbers.

"I'm not going to tell you what we're tracking and indicators or warnings from an intelligence standpoint, but we're tracking everything," General Milley explained.

"And there are enough out there right now to cause a lot of concern, and we will continue to monitor," he said.

Russia and Ukraine have a shared history spanning centuries and forming the Soviet Union's largest republic until its collapse in 1991, so Moscow views its neighbor's ambitions to join NATO as an insult and a threat.

Since the last crisis began, Moscow has been making demands for legally binding security guarantees from the West, and for assurances that NATO will not recognize Ukraine as a member or deploy missile systems there to target Russia.

Yesterday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Moscow of the "heavy costs" of invading Ukraine, urging its Russian counterpart to seek a diplomatic way out of the crisis.

General Milley declined to speculate whether Russian President Vladimir Putin might be encouraged by US President Joe Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying "you have to ask Putin."

"I think it would be a mistake for any country to draw broad strategic conclusions based on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, then take that event and automatically apply it to other situations," Milley said.

He cited historic examples of past US Presidents withdrawing troops in some places but ordering military action in others.

"So the United States is a country that is sometimes difficult for other countries to understand," he said.