Pavel Polityuk and Sabine Siebold

KYIV/BRUSSELS – NATO stated that Russia has increased its deployments to Ukraine’s northern neighbor Belarus over recent days. It was also expected to send 30,000 soldiers there this month for joint military exercises.

Moscow has been able to use the Russia-Belarus exercises that ran until February 20th, as a cover for increasing its forces in Ukraine. This comes at a time when Britain and the United States have expressed concern about Moscow’s potential war plans.

According to Ukraine’s defense minister, Russia currently has 115,000 soldiers near Ukraine’s border.

Russia denied any intention to invade Ukraine. It described the Allied Resolve exercises conducted with Belarus as a practice for repelling outside aggression. Russia hasn’t disclosed how many of its troops are there, but said they would withdraw from the exercises.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg declared: “Over recent days, we’ve seen a significant move of Russian military force into Belarus.

He stated that this was the largest Russian military deployment since the Cold War. It included Spetsnaz special forces and Spetsnaz fighter jets as well as S-400 air defense systems, S-35 fighter planes, S-35 missiles and Iskander rockets.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was in Belarus to inspect Russian-Belarusian troops. On Thursday, he was scheduled to meet Alexander Lukashenko. Interfax reported.

NATO and the United States have rejected Russian demand to ban Ukraine from joining NATO. They also refused to withdraw their allied forces from eastern Europe. However, both sides expressed willingness to discuss arms control and confidence-building.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stated Tuesday that the West has ignored Russia’s major concerns. He accused the United States and tried to get it to war. However, he claimed Russia is still open for dialogue.

The Kremlin accused Washington again of inflaming tensions, after it announced that the United States would send almost 3,000 additional troops to Poland or Romania. Pentagon stated that the purpose was to “strongly signal to Putin” and to all the world “NATO matters for the United States, and to our allies.”

Turkish President Tayyip Turkey was scheduled to visit Kyiv Thursday. He has already offered to act as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine during the crisis.

According to Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, the framework agreement between Turkey and Ukraine will allow for Turkish drones to be manufactured in Ukraine. This move is sure placate Moscow. In a conflict with Russian-backed separatists, Ukraine already has Turkish-made drones.

Reznikov stated that the conflict’s ceasefire violations had declined and there were no combat deaths in the last three weeks.

Following a suggestion from Erdogan, Ukraine accepted the shift of the place for peace talks in eastern Ukraine to Istanbul and other Turkish cities. Russia must however agree to it.