Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
New satellite imagery obtained by CNN shows that a large base which held Russian tanks, artillery and other armour near the Ukrainian border has been largely emptied, with the equipment apparently being moved much closer to the frontier in recent days.
The base is at Yelnya, southeast of the city of Smolensk and some 258 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. Large amounts of weaponry were moved there late in 2021 -- including some 700 tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and ballistic missile launchers.
Much of that equipment is now gone, according to radar satellite imagery acquired on Feb. 6. Cloud cover had prevented photographic imagery of the site for several days previously. The images show the tracks of departing vehicles.
Stephen Wood, senior director at satellite imagery company Maxar, told CNN: "It looks to me like a considerable amount of the vehicles [tanks, self-propelled artillery and other support vehicles] have departed from the northeastern vehicle park; additional armored vehicles departed from the more central vehicle park."
Konrad Muzyka, an expert in tracking military movements with Rochan Consulting, says what has happened at Yelnya is one of several "important changes in Russian force compositions and their locations."
He told CNN: "We are entering the new stage of the build-up where we are seeing pre-positioned units being manned with additional personnel and that equipment is being moved probably to staging areas."
Social media videos shot in the last few days show some of that equipment on trains and roads much further south in the Bryansk region, which is close to Ukraine. The armor and vehicles are identifiably from the same units that had pre-positioned at Yelnya.
"There are now multiple indicators suggesting troops have begun deploying to forward camps to join up with their prepositioned equipment," writes Thomas Bullock, an analyst at Janes. "Video posted on social media indicates some troops from Siberia, whose equipment has already been moved to sites in Smolensk and Bryansk, are in the process of deploying."
A U.S. intelligence document dated Dec. 3, 2021 included satellite imagery showing that the site at Yelnya was empty in June -- but by November was home to five Battalion Tactical Groups, each of which contains about 1,000 troops and supporting elements. Much of the equipment belongs to the 41st Combined Arms Army, which is normally based in Russia's Central Military District and has its headquarters in Novosibirsk in Siberia.
Muzyka says there are substantial Russian movements elsewhere. "We are seeing a massive influx of vehicles and personnel in Kursk," he tweeted Sunday. Kursk is some 100 kilometres from the border with Ukraine.
Phillip Karber of the Potomac Foundation in Washington, who has also studied Russian troop movements in detail, told CNN: "Russia's strongest offensive formation -- the First Guards Tank Army, which is normally stationed in the Moscow area -- has moved south 400 kilometres and is assembling in the optimum area for a rapid armoured offensive on the Khursk-Kyiv invasion route."
On Sunday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told ABC News: "We believe that there is a very distinct possibility that Vladimir Putin will order an attack on Ukraine. It could take a number of different forms. It could happen as soon as tomorrow or it could take some weeks yet."
Separately U.S. officials told CNN at the weekend that Russian President Vladimir Putin has now assembled 70 per cent of the military personnel and weapons on Ukraine's borders he would need for a full-scale invasion of the country.
This includes a growing force in southern Belarus.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any plans for a military offensive against Ukraine.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.