Ukraine's President alleges Russia-backed coup planned next week; cites Intel sources

As geopolitical tensions between Russian and Ukraine escalated to an all-time high with Moscow’s military troops holding exercises in a demonstration of combat readiness, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday claimed that his country's intelligence service has unveiled Russia’s coup d'etat plans on Kyiv set for next week. The intelligence about the invasion, he said allegedly involves one of Ukraine's richest oligarchs, Kyiv’s news agency Ukrinform reported. Zelenskyy, although, did not name the plotter.

At a news conference in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, Zelensky told reporters that he has received intel, as well the audio intercepts prove that a coup was being planned for next Wednesday or Thursday, December 1 and 2 in the coming week. 

Ukrainian soldiers say 'We won't leave' 

Near the city of Donetsk, in Eastern Ukraine, a heavy military troop buildup can lately be witnessed near the barrier towards Russia-backed separatists at about 250 metres away, Maxar’s satellite imagery shows. As tensions are simmering on the volatile border, the Ukrainian soldiers are seen deployed on the front line waiting to confront the Russian offensive. 

"We won't leave,” a commander for Ukrainian military forces told an on-ground reporter for TV station CBC. "We will stay here until the end.”

Despite multiple ceasefires, the confrontations between Ukrainian soldiers and  Russian troops have broken out in the southeastern region of Donbas near the Ukraine-Russia border over the past several years. And with forces on both sides inching closer to the border NATO warned that the situation would spiral into full-blown conflict as it rushed to convene a meeting in Riga, Latvia's capital, next week. 

The Russian government has denied allegations they are planning a coup in Ukraine. Credit: AP

Russian paratroopers load into a plane for airborne drills during manoeuvres in Taganrog, Russia. Credit: AP

In retrospect, as the Russian troops mobilised at the conflict-prone Ukrainian border, experts are weighing in skirmishes and systemic military aggression between soldiers that now clout the former war zone of Donbas and parts near Crimea annexed to Russia. Moscow, which has consistently dismissed the military buildup as “taking measures to ensure the security of its own borders”, dismissed coup reports or imminent invasion narrative despite the fact that the Kremlin has deployed over 90,000 soldiers in the rebel-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine. 

Russia’s 41st army has been stationed in Yelnya, a town 260 kilometres north of the Ukrainian border, and recent satellite imagery reveals increased military activity from Russia's 144th Guards Motorized Rifle Division according to a defence ministry’s statement. The Kremlin blamed the United States joint military exercises in the Black sea behind Russia’s provocation.

Russian military build-up on contentious Moscow-Kyiv border. Credit: Maxar 

“What we see is a significant, large Russian military build-up. We see an unusual concentration of troops. And we know that Russia has been willing to use these types of military capabilities before to conduct aggressive actions against Ukraine,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at a conference, last week. 

Stoltenberg stressed, furthermore, that Russia was in fact planning to invade its ex-Soviet neighbour, adding that NATO is closely monitoring the “unusual concentration of Russian forces” on the border. The NATO chief compared Russia’s military aggression with the instances of Russian invasions in the past. Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘stealthily’ provided the military support to separatists in Georgia’s breakaway South Ossetia region in 2008, Stoltenberg reminded, adding that Moscow also de facto controlled South Ossetia for several years drafting operating procedures for Georgian rebel factions’ armed forces. In 2014, when similar military concentration was noted, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the NATO chief warned. 

Moscow raised 'billions of dollars' for operation, says Zelensky; Russia accuses West of 'whipping' artificial hysteria

Blaming Russia of backing the separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, and accusing Putin of 14,000 casualties from the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that Russia is now planning to overthrow him this coming week. Suspected Oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov raised “billions of dollars” to invest into the operation with the Russian government, he reportedly said as hostilities between the two longstanding arch-rivals intensified. Russia’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov had earlier at a state presser dismissed such concerns as “rhetoric we have been seeing and hearing from Russia and on social media” from the West and the US. Peskov accused the US of "artificially whipping up” and creating hysteria.