KYIV/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia accused the United States on Thursday of ramping up tensions and ignoring Moscow's calls to ease a standoff over Ukraine, a day after Washington announced it would send nearly 3,000 extra troops to Poland and Romania.
NATO meanwhile said Russia had stepped up deployments to Ukraine's northern neighbour Belarus in recent days and was expected to have 30,000 troops there for joint military exercises this month.
Ukraine says Russia has positioned 115,000 troops near its borders, stoking fears of a looming attack. Moscow denies any such plan but international concern that Russia might be gearing up for war is running high.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced the U.S. troop deployments on a conference call with reporters on Thursday.
"It's obvious that these are not steps aimed at de-escalating tensions, but on the contrary they are actions that lead to increasing tension," he said.
"We constantly call on our American counterparts to stop aggravating tensions on the European continent. Unfortunately, the Americans continue to do so," he said.
Washington and NATO have rejected Russian demands to bar Ukraine from joining NATO and withdraw allied forces and weapons systems from eastern Europe, while expressing a readiness to discuss arms control and confidence-building measures.
BIGGEST DEPLOYMENT SINCE COLD WAR
The Russia-Belarus exercises, running until Feb. 20, have provided Moscow with cover to further increase forces near Ukraine. It has described the Allied Resolve exercises as a rehearsal for repelling external aggression and says its forces will withdraw after the drills.
In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said there had been a significant movement of Russian military forces into Belarus in recent days.
"This is the biggest Russian deployment there since the Cold War, with an expected 30,000 combat troops" as well as Spetsnaz special operations forces, SU-35 fighter jets, S-400 air defence systems and nuclear-capable Iskander missiles, he said.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu arrived in Belarus on Thursday to inspect Russian and Belarusian troops and was due to meet Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko.
The Belarusian Defence Minister released images from the exercises showing troops parachuting to the ground, fighter jets in the sky, soldiers dismounting from a helicopter holding weapons, and tanks firing and manoeuvring. Belarus, which has 9.5 million people, shares its western border with NATO members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, while Ukraine lies to its south.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday the West had ignored Russia's main concerns and accused the United States of trying to lure it into war, but he said Moscow was still interested in dialogue.
The Pentagon said the aim of the U.S. troop reinforcements was to send a "strong signal" to Putin.
PATH OF PEACE
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who has offered to mediate between Russia and Ukraine in the crisis, was due to visit Kyiv on Thursday.
Ukraine and Turkey will sign a framework agreement on manufacturing Turkish drones in Ukraine, Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov told reporters, in a move that is certain to annoy Moscow.
Kyiv has already deployed Turkish-made drones in a war with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Reznikov said the number of ceasefire violations in that conflict had decreased and there had been no combat losses for the past three weeks.
In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron said he and Polish President Andrzej Duda had discussed the possibility of a three-way meeting along with Germany in coming days on the situation in Ukraine.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the European Union was working on a joint response to a letter many of its member countries received from Russia earlier this week asking for security guarantees.
Von der Leyen called for Russia to return to a path of "peace and dialogue" or face sanctions.
(Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Gareth Jones)
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