MOSCOW (Reuters) - The extra Russian military forces near the border with Ukraine have been deployed there in response to instability in Ukraine, a Kremlin spokesman said, in a departure from the previous explanation that they were on routine exercises.
"We ... have forces in the region of the Ukrainian border. Some of these forces are based there permanently, others are there to reinforce, against the backdrop of what is happening in Ukraine itself," Dmitry Peskov, spokesman to Russian President Vladimir Putin said on the Rossiya 1 television station.