ukrainians are blaming everything on russia, even their bad weather. but the timing does receive unusual right at the time when the talks don t seem to be going anywhere, the russian government has suggested they would take some military and technical actions against ukraine if the talks didn t go well. is it just a total could incompetence dense that somehow hackers from somewhere decided to target ukrainian government offices? you know, it s very dangerous coincidence, extremely dangerous. for more on this growing standoff, cnn s fred pleitgen is live in moscow. look, tensions clearly continuing to grow despite what fareed said yesterday. the meetings yesterday u.s., nato, russia, now we have ukraine growing russia. peskov saying they re not behind it, don t know anything about it. what more do we know? what s ukraine saying here?
troops amassed near the ukrainian border, several ukrainian government websites were targeted in a cyberattack. the u.s. has blamed russia for crippling hacks against ukraine in the past. but it has not directly accused russia in the latest incident. still national security adviser jake sullivan did issue a warning to moscow. there will be severe economic consequences. if russia is pummelling ukraine with cyberattacks, we ll work with our allies on the appropriate response. as this goes on, the pentagon now says they have information that russia has operatives in place to make people believe ukraine is starting trouble to justify an invasion. for more on this growing standoff, cnn s fred pleitgen joins us now from moscow.
actually bolstering the number of troops it s sending to saudi arabia. announcing 3,000 over the course of the past month alone to help bolster saudi arabia s defenses in its growing standoff with its regional rival, iran. but, i mean, everybody in this region, the saudi arabians, the kurds as well, know full well now more than ever that u.s.st alliances don t necessarily last forever, george. matthew chance, thanks for the reporting. now to ecuador and the violent protests that rocked that nation for almost two weeks appears to be over new. the government has reached an agreement with indigenous protest leaders to repeal a decree that sparked the unrest. the decree ended fuel subsidies and was passed to get a loan from the international monetary fund. cnn spoke about why the government is repealing it. listen. reporter: the indigenous
now, we ve got several days of this signal so it s not going to switch off overnight, after seven days of it. and that will be a good indicatien indication. it wouldn t be easy. i m not for a moment sitting here saying it is. they will find the plane. i promise you this. everything we ve known so far they will also find what happened because planes do not fall out of the sky at 36,000 feet without somebody wanting to get to the to the bomb of why. all right. richard quest. thank you. if of course in the south china sea we understand that it is shallow so that ping could make a difference. we re going to have a report coming from beijing, china, again, because 159 of the 259 people on board are chinese national. we ll bring you up to date on that end. moving on to the crisis in ukraine. a growing standoff between pro-russian forces and
somewhere in the south china sea. now, of course, that s according to state media, but here in china and in vietnam and from those eyewitness accounts seen from the vietnamese military planes. but at this stage, they don t know definitively what happened. people coming past us really stone faced mostly, not really talking to the press, but certainly some tears in their eyes and one woman shouting out in chinese, my son was only 40 years old, so those agonizing hours that they ve been waiting here, since the plane vanished over vietnamese air space much earlier today. all right. david, keep us posted there from beijing. thank you so much. moving on now. to the crisis in ukraine. a growing standoff between pro russian forces and ukraine shows no forces of letting up in crimea. an unmarked convoy of about 70