MOSCOW — Ukrainian officials have been raising alarms about what they say is a huge buildup of Russian troops, tanks and artillery pieces along their border that could signal preparations for an invasion.

While the Russian military presence along the border is undisputed, some analysts have questioned its characterization as a buildup that might telegraph an escalation in the war in eastern Ukraine. Russia has quartered thousands of troops in the area for nearly five years. The United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, while broadly voicing support for Ukraine, have not corroborated the claim of troops massing at the border.

The Ukrainians have pointed to commercially available satellite images showing rows of tanks and armored personnel carriers at two sites in southern Russia, and military transport planes parked at an air base in Crimea.

The Il-76 jets arrived at the same airfield, called Dzhankoi, where last month the Russian news media reported a new deployment of S-400 long-range antiaircraft missiles, among the most sophisticated weapons in Russia’s arsenal.

The dozens of T-72 battle tanks are parked at a depot in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, a town about 12 miles east of a section of the Ukrainian border already controlled by pro-Russian separatists.

“Here we see a concentration of Russian armaments on our border, not some regular drills,” Volodymyr V. Fesenko, the director of the Penta political studies institute in Kiev, said in a telephone interview, echoing concerns raised by Ukrainian officials.

Last month President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine declared martial law in border regions after Russia fired at and seized Ukrainian ships in the Black Sea. He cited as justification what he called a wider Russian military buildup.

On Friday, the director of Ukraine’s intelligence service said Russia might invade on Saturday during a meeting of church leaders planned in Kiev to discuss the schism of the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox churches. The church dispute “may become a pretext for open military invasion,” said the intelligence chief, Vasyl Hrytsak. On Saturday, no invasion started.

Russian state media have mocked Ukrainian officials as shrill and warmongering. But the assertions are reminiscent of alarms raised by the Ukrainian government in 2014 after street protesters in the capital, Kiev, deposed a pro-Russian president. Then, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and announced military exercises near the border with eastern Ukraine and sent soldiers and heavy weapons across in an unacknowledged intervention.

Then, NATO released satellite images corroborating the Ukrainian assertions. But after Mr. Poroshenko visited NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, the secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, made no specific mention of a buildup. Mr. Stoltenberg said in a statement that members of the alliance “remain concerned about the heightened tensions.”

The Pentagon, too, has been cautious. A Defense Department official said the United States military had not seen a significant buildup of Russian military equipment on the Ukrainian border since the naval episode on Nov. 25, aside from a small number of defensive weapons that were moved in recent days.

The satellite image of tanks in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky dated from October, before the Ukrainian ships were seized. While new S-400 missiles were moved into Crimea after the seizure, Russia had already deployed batteries of this type of weapon to the peninsula.

Russia’s southern border with Ukraine, an expanse of wheat fields, grasslands and reedy marshes in the Don River delta, has been a crucible of military activity for years, making it unclear what, exactly, Ukrainian officials are referring to as new deployments. On Dec. 1, Mr. Poroshenko said Russia had stationed 80,000 troops near the Ukrainian border.

“It’s very difficult to verify these kinds of figures, and very often we don’t know what we are trying to verify or look for,” Anna Arutunyan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, said in a telephone interview. The number could refer to troops regularly based throughout southern Russia.

But the accusation of a buildup, she said, could become a “self-fulfilling prophesy” if Russia responds to Ukraine’s declaration of martial law by indeed sending reinforcements to the border. Ukrainian television has shown its troops flying on transport planes from western Ukraine to eastern regions closer to Russia.

On Thursday, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, accused Ukraine of building up forces and said its military planned an “armed provocation” against the Donetsk People’s Republic, one of the two Russian-backed separatist enclaves. The Ukrainian Army, she said, had “concentrated a military group” for an attack. Ms. Zakharova said Mr. Poroshenko planned the offensive to bolster his chances in a presidential election in Ukraine scheduled for March.

The loose talk of war seemed to be posing its own risks. Ms. Zakharova’s comments touched off worries in Ukraine that Russia might justify an attack by pointing at Ukraine’s mobilization under martial law — no matter that Ukraine justified martial law by first pointing at a risk from Russia.

Yevhen Fedchenko, the director of a Ukrainian group that monitors Russian propaganda, posted on Twitter his explanation of Ms. Zakharova’s comment, saying, “Russia is preparing major offensive against Ukraine, under pretext Ukraine is doing that first.”

Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from Moscow and Thomas Gibbons-Neff from Washington

Follow Andrew E. Kramer on Twitter: @AndrewKramerNYT.

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