U.S. tells Russia to pull back its troops

U.S. warns Putin against invasion of Ukraine

• The United States urged Russia on Wednesday to pull back its troops from the Ukrainian border, warning that a Russian invasion would provoke sanctions that would hit Moscow harder than any imposed until now.

“We don't know whether President (Vladimir) Putin has made the decision to invade. We do know that he is putting in place the capacity to do so on short order should he so decide,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

“Should Russia follow the path of confrontation, when it comes to Ukraine, we've made clear that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of high impact economic measures that we have refrained from pursuing in the past.”

Blinken was speaking in the Latvian capital Riga after conferring with foreign ministers from NATO and Ukraine on how to respond to what Kyiv says is a Russian buildup of more than 90,000 troops near its border.

Russia seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 but denies aggressive intent in the current crisis and claims it is responding to threatening behaviour by NATO and Ukraine.

The Kremlin said it feared Ukraine was gearing up to try to recapture by force areas controlled by pro-russian separatists in the Donbass region in the east of the country — something Kyiv denies — and accused it of “very dangerous adventurism.”

It said Russia could not take any steps to de-escalate because of a large concentration of Ukrainian forces close to the border.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Europe faced a critical moment and Russia was trying to shift the blame onto Ukraine.

“I would like again to officially state that Ukraine does not plan any military offensive in Donbass. This is Russian propaganda nonsense in order to cover up Russia's own preparations for a potential attack.”

Blinken declined to spell out what sanctions Russia might face and encouraged both Moscow and Kyiv to return to diplomacy and revive a 2014 peace plan for eastern Ukraine.

Russia has blunted the impact of sanctions imposed over its invasion of Crimea by reducing its borrowings on foreign financial markets and maintaining large currency and gold reserves.

But the West has more potential leverage now if it were to target the newly built Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea, through which Russia is keen to start pumping gas as soon as it gets the green light from a German regulator.

Ukraine's current aspiration to join both the European Union and NATO has made it the main flashpoint in Russia's deteriorating relations with the West.