According to US administration officials, Russia is will launch a military offensive against Ukraine in early 2022. This is a prediction based on the rumor that in the Summer Moscow doubled the military forces stationed along the Ukrainian border. There would be 175,000 Soviet soldiers in Smolensk, ready to invade Crimea and Donbass. Meanwhile, today US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will speak in a video-call that is expected to take place at 4 pm Italian time. 

They will discuss "tensions in Ukraine, Nato's expansion toward Russian borders and the Russian leader's initiative to ensure security". "It will then be necessary to discuss what is being done to implement the understandings reached in Geneva and take a look at what is being implemented and what requires further efforts. Of course, this relates to bilateral relations, the conditions of which remain deplorable". "We believe it will be a long and substantive videoconference", said the Russian President's spokesman Dmitry Peskov. 

The two leaders will first of all have to mend bilateral relations. The Kremlin target is to shore up the recent initiative on the security pact with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) with the aim of preventing future expansion in Russia: in fact, Moscow accuses Washington of having placed nuclear missiles in Poland and Romania, recalling also the American military maneuvers in the Black Sea.