Steve Holland and Nandita Bolse

WASHINGTON (Reuters), -The West has struggled to figure out when and if Russia’s President Vladimir Putin might launch a military offensive.

U.S. intelligence closely monitors troop movements, equipment, and other activities in the region. It also attempts to account for international events such as the Beijing Olympics or a meeting with Western allies.

Officials from the United States admit that only Putin can predict what he’ll do. The United States and allies have not stopped trying to predict more precisely what Putin will do, U.S. officials admit.

Russia currently has over 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders. Russia denies any invasion plans by Westerners, however, it says that it may take “military technical” actions if it doesn’t meet a number of requirements, such as excluding Kyiv ever from the NATO alliance.

According to the White House, an attack on Monday could be imminent. This message has been repeated many times in recent days.

Karine Jean-Pierre (White House deputy press secretary) stated, “We’re in a window that an invasion can happen at any given time.” It might begin as early as this week.

Many Western countries advised citizens that Ukraine should be left by late last week. Some top Ukrainian politicians and business leaders also fled the country.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged them to return Monday via a video message to the nation.

Without naming the ‘they,’ he stated that they told him February 16, would be the date of the attack. This caused confusion on global markets, and led to a sell-off of the [MKTS/GLOB]

Officials in Ukraine stressed that Zelenskiy wasn’t predicting an attack that day, but were responding skeptically to reports from foreign media pointing out Wednesday.

According to the Pentagon, Monday was not a day for a warning by Putin.

“I don’t want to get into any specific date. I don’t believe that’s smart. John Kirby (NYSE : Pentagon spokesperson) said that it was possible that the man could make a move at any time with very little warning.

Jake Sullivan, White House National Security Advisor said that Russia may not wait for the Winter Olympics in China to end on February 20, a change from a widely-held belief that Putin wouldn’t want to ruin President Xi Jinping’s major sports event.

Another trigger could come from the Munich Security Conference, a German international conference of foreign policy experts, which took place in Germany on February 18-20. The Crimea crisis erupted while the Munich Conference in Germany was taking place in 2014. It focused on violent clashes in Ukraine between the government officials and the opposition.