Ukraine-Russia map: Where could invasion take place and what is the situation along the border?

Russian president Vladimir Putin has dispatched more than 106,000 soldiers to the country’s border with Ukraine in a show of military might ahead of what international observers fear could be an invasion.

Western leaders from US president Joe Biden to British prime minister Boris Johnson have cautioned Mr Putin against such a step, with the former saying on Tuesday: “There would be enormous consequences if he were to go in and invade... for Russia, not only in terms of economic consequences and political consequences but enormous consequences worldwide.”

Mr Johnson likewise urged the Russian president not to follow the “path of bloodshed and destruction” during a speech to the House of Commons on Tuesday while his foreign secretary Liz Truss has accused Moscow of seeking to “destabilise Ukrainian democracy”.

US secretary of state Anthony Blinken staged talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Geneva late last week in the hope of averting catastrophe, warning against a return to the bitter tensions of the Cold War era, while other nations have evacuated their diplomatic personnel from Ukraine as a precaution in case the fighting should commence.

However, quite how far either side is prepared to go in the present standoff remains unclear.

Mr Putin is known to fiercely oppose his neighbour’s determination to join Nato in search of greater protection and is believed to desire the return of former Soviet satellite states like Ukraine, Georgia and perhaps Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to the embrace of what he still considers to be their motherland, lamenting their independence since the collapse of the USSR in 1989.

The Kremlin leader previously annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 in response to Ukraine voting out his ally Viktor Yanukovych, shrugging off the protests and international condemnation that followed.

But whether Russia will really start a war on its own front doorstep and risk international pariah status is unknown, as is the extent to which the US and Europe’s major powers would be prepared to protect a state that it not a member of their military alliance, be that by supplying shipments of artillery, weapons and armoured vehicles or by imposing tough economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation on Moscow as a punishment.

Russia has already begun to complain that the US and Nato are “cultivating Russophobia” and alleged that Ukraine is being “flooded” with weapons by its allies in preparation for armed conflict.

Here are two maps to explain Ukraine’s frought situation.

The first shows its borders within continental Europe.

The second details the placement of its cities in relation to the buildup of Russian troops, tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery units, which are currently clustered around the eastern front surrounding the Donbas region of Ukraine where Donetsk and Luhansk are situated.

The Russian military also has a heavy presence in the Crimea and naval forces lurking in the Black Sea.