MOSCOW
\nRussia announced Saturday that more than 10,000 troops had finished month-long drills near Ukraine, amid Western accusations that Moscow was plotting an invasion of its ex-Soviet neighbour.
\nThe defence ministry said in a statement that the drills for Southern Military District forces had taken place in a host of southern regions including Rostov, Krasnodar and Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
\nBut the drills also took place further afield, including in Stavropol, Astrakhan, North Caucasus republics and even in Russia\u2019s Caucasus ally Armenia.
\nThe defence ministry said the troops were returning to their permanent bases and that stand-by units would be readied for the New Year\u2019s holidays.
\nWestern countries have accused Russia of massing upwards of 100,000 troops near Ukraine ahead of a possible winter invasion.
\nAccording to Kiev\u2019s estimates, the number of Russian troops along Ukraine\u2019s borders has increased from around 93,000 troops in October to 104,000 now.
\nRussia says it is free to move its forces on its territory how it sees fit and denies that it is planning a large-scale attack.
\nIt has presented the West with sweeping security demands, saying NATO must not admit new members and seeking to bar the United States from establishing new bases in former Soviet republics.<\/p>\n
– German-Russian meeting –
\nTensions reached a boiling point on Wednesday when President Vladimir Putin said Russia would take \u201cappropriate retaliatory\u201d military steps in response to what he called the West\u2019s \u201caggressive stance\u201d.<\/p>\n
But he lowered the volume the next day, saying he had seen a \u201cpositive\u201d reaction from the United States to Russia\u2019s security proposals and said talks would take place next month.<\/p>\n
A senior US official has said Washington was \u201cready to engage in diplomacy as soon as early January\u201d, both bilaterally and through \u201cmultiple channels\u201d.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, a German government official said Moscow and Berlin had agreed to a meeting in \u201cearly January\u201d.<\/p>\n
German leader Olaf Scholz and Putin in a phone call Thursday agreed to the meeting between the chancellor\u2019s diplomatic adviser, Jens Ploetner, and the Kremlin\u2019s pointman on relations with Ukraine, Dmitry Kozak.<\/p>\n
In an interview on Friday, a senior Ukrainian security official told AFP that there was no risk of an imminent Russian invasion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MOSCOW Russia announced Saturday that more than 10,000 troops had finished month-long drills near Ukraine, amid Western accusations that Moscow was plotting an invasion of its ex-Soviet neighbour. The defence ministry said in a statement that the drills for Southern Military District forces had taken place in a host of southern regions including Rostov, Krasnodar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-235177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n