WASHINGTON
\nThe United States said on Wednesday it was deploying thousands of troops to bolster Nato forces in eastern Europe, ratcheting up its military response to fears that Russia could invade Ukraine.
\nRussia has massed than 100,000 troops on Ukraine\u2019s borders, and Western leaders have warned that any incursion into the ex-Soviet nation would be met with \u201csevere consequences.\u201d Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said 1,000 US troops in Germany would deploy to Romania, and 2,000 based in the United States would be sent to Germany and Poland.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s important that we send a strong signal to (President Vladimir) Putin and the world that Nato matters to the United States,\u201d Kirby said, adding \u201cthis is not the sum total of the deterrence actions that we will take.\u201d \u201cThese forces are not going to fight in Ukraine,\u201d he stressed. \u201cThey are not permanent moves. They respond to current conditions.\u201d As Nato leaders pursued diplomatic efforts to avert any invasion of pro-Western Ukraine, a senior Kremlin official stressed that Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping shared views on global security.
\nRussia denies any plans to invade its neighbour, with Putin accusing the West of failing to respect Moscow\u2019s security concerns.
\nThe Kremlin said China would explicitly back Russia\u2019s stance when Putin visits Beijing for the opening of the Winter Olympics this week.
\n\u201cChina supports Russia\u2019s demands for security guarantees,\u201d the Kremlin\u2019s top foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov told reporters.
\nRussian officials have demanded a ban on Ukraine joining Nato and on the deployment of missile systems near Russia\u2019s borders, as well as a pullback of the US-led military alliance\u2019s forces in eastern Europe.
\nIn his first major remarks on the crisis in weeks, Putin on Tuesday suggested Washington was using Kyiv as an instrument to potentially drag Moscow into a war.
\n\u201cUkraine itself is just a tool to achieve this goal\u201d of containing Russia, Putin said.
\nPutin left the door open to talks however, saying he hoped that \u201cin the end we will find a solution.\u201d The United States and Nato have provided written responses to Moscow\u2019s demands, which Putin said he is studying.
\nSpanish newspaper El Pais on Wednesday published what it said were leaked copies of the responses, which showed Washington and Nato offering Moscow arms control and trust-building measures.
\nThe proposals remain firm on insisting that Ukraine and any other country have a right to apply to join the alliance.
\nBut the reported US response suggests \u201creciprocal commitments by both the United States and Russia to refrain from deploying offensive ground-launched missile systems and permanent forces with a combat mission in the territory of Ukraine.\u201d Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte was meanwhile the latest Nato leader to visit Kiev in a show of support for Ukraine, where he met President Volodymyr Zelensky.
\nAfter the talks, Zelensky said Ukraine was focused \u201conly on peace\u201d, but insisted it has the right to defend itself. The Ukrainian leader had met a day earlier with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was due to hold a phone call with Putin on Wednesday.
\nTensions have been further aggravated by plans for joint military exercises between Russia and neighboring Belarus, where Washington claims Moscow is preparing to send 30,000 troops.
\nWhile stressing that \u201cconflict is not inevitable,\u201d Kirby on Wednesday accused Putin of continuing \u201cto destabilize the environment by adding more forces to the western part of his country and Belarus.\u201d Video footage released by the Russian defense ministry on Wednesday showed tanks speeding across snowy fields in Belarus and combat helicopters flying overhead as units from both countries practised ahead of the February 10-20 drills.
\nUkraine has been battling Moscow-backed insurgencies in two separatist regions since 2014, when Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula.
\nMore than 13,000 people have been killed in the fighting, the last major ongoing war in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON The United States said on Wednesday it was deploying thousands of troops to bolster Nato forces in eastern Europe, ratcheting up its military response to fears that Russia could invade Ukraine. Russia has massed than 100,000 troops on Ukraine\u2019s borders, and Western leaders have warned that any incursion into the ex-Soviet nation would be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1116,1319,456,444],"class_list":{"0":"post-242446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-nato","9":"tag-support","10":"tag-ukraine","11":"tag-us"},"yoast_head":"\n