We have seen for a long time how Russian forces has been moved to locations around Ukraine, troops from far east Russia has been deployed near Ukraine, not even during the largest Soviet Russian military exercises has far east units been deployed this far to the west.
Suddenly on the 18th of January we got news from Donbas that an evacuation of Children, elderly and women to Russia (the message had been filmed already on the 16th of January. The news was announced by the crime-lord Denis Pushilin, what he failed to tell was the people was paid 10000 ruble to leave their homes. For most people in the occupied parts of Donbas 10000 rubles is a lot of money as the economy in the region has been destroyed by the crime-lords who rule in the area and there been internal struggles over power.
This is the clever part of Putin’s plan, to attack Ukraine without loosing too many Russian lives, as now Russia has a hostage and can force the men in Donbas to join the crime-lord’s armies or else something bad will happen to their relatives in Russia. So when the so called “peoples republics” go to attack, it will mainly be Ukrainians killing Ukrainians and Russian forces can safely stay in the background and at the same time if things would go badly, Russia can claim they haven’t taken part of the whole.
Why so much Russian forces around Ukraine, the simple answer is that now Ukraine has to thin it’s lines around Donbas so that it will be easier to expand down towards occupied Krim. We will see full attack from direction, with a heavy sledge from the occupied Krim and and Donbas. [Orders to finalize preparations in for eminent attack has been given on the 20th of February by Putin]
The whole is part of a systematic rape of Ukraine and Russia will keep on raping their neighbors, Moldova could be another target as there are still Russian forces protecting another fake republic, if already in control of Ukraine then Moldova will be the closes western neighbor not part of NATO and a former Soviet Republic.
When the west starts with economical sanctions against Russia, they should include freezing all accounts in western banks that are held by a Russian citizen or have connections to Russia through off-shore companies. This way most of the money held by Putin’s friends and a good part of his “private” (stolen from the Russian state) money be taken out of their control and would make Putin more prepared to talk about removing Russian forces from the whole Ukraine.