The United States and Britain warned Russia on Tuesday over any new military aggression against Ukraine as the Western military alliance NATO met to discuss Moscow’s intentions for massing troops on the border with the former Soviet republic.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was to brief his 29 NATO counterparts on Washington’s intelligence on the group’s eastern flank and in Ukraine, which is not a member.
Kyiv’s aspirations for integration with the West trigerred a major stand-off with Moscow earlier this century.
The Kremlin went on to annex the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and then backed rebels fighting government troops in the east of the country. That conflict killed 14,000 people, according to Kyiv, and is still simmering.
At a news conference before the NATO meeting, Blinken expressed alarm at the “unusual” Russian troop movements and “increasingly belligerent rheteoric” from Moscow.
“Any escalatory actions by Russia would be a great concern to the United States… and any renewed aggression would trigger serious consequences,” he said.
“We will be consulting closely with NATO allies and partners in the days ahead… about whether there are other steps that we should take as an alliance to strengthen our defences, strengthen our resilience, strengthen our capacity.”
Two Russian troop build-ups this year on Ukraine’s borders have alarmed the West. In May, Russian troops there numbered 100,000, the largest since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Western officials say.
Moscow has dismissed as inflammatory Ukraine’s suggestions that it is preparing for an attack, said it does not threaten anyone and defended its right to deploy troops on its own territory as it wishes.
