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Russian soldiers board a plane for airborne exercises
Photo: Uncredited / dpa
Germany and the US have warned Russia against an attack on Ukraine.
"Russia would have to pay a high price for any form of aggression," said the still-Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Tuesday during consultations with NATO colleagues in the Latvian capital Riga.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said "any new aggression would have serious consequences."
The background to the statements of the politicians are the findings of NATO, according to which Russia has again concentrated unusually large contingents of troops and modern weapons near the border with Ukraine.
"Russia's military activities on the border with Ukraine give us great cause for concern," said Maas.
Honest and sustainable steps towards de-escalation that only lead through discussions are now important.
"I never tire of stressing that the door to such talks remains open for Russia," he added.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also described the situation as worrying and called Russia's foreign policy action "aggressive".
Latvia's Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said recent events were reminders that Russia remained a threat.
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba spoke the day before in Kiev about 115,000 Russian soldiers on the common border.
It is also conceivable that the Russian troop deployment is linked to the NATO meeting in Latvia.
For the first time, a meeting of NATO foreign ministers is being organized in the alliance state that borders directly on Russia.
Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania joined the alliance in 2004 despite strong criticism from Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said at an event in Moscow on Tuesday that Russia would be forced to act if NATO crossed its "red lines" with regard to Ukraine.
Moscow would consider the deployment of certain offensive missile capabilities on Ukrainian soil as a trigger.
Putin: New hypersonic missile successfully tested
"What should we do in such a scenario?" Said Putin.
“We must then do something similar in relation to those who threaten us in this way.
And we can do that now. ”Putin said Russia had successfully tested a new hypersonic missile that will be operational by the beginning of the new year.
He said it had a flight time of five minutes at nine times the speed of sound.
Regarding NATO's fears of a possible invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine, he said: "It's not about sending or not sending troops there, to fight or not to fight, but to improve relations." Everyone's security interests international actors would have to be taken into account. "If we make a sincere effort, no one will experience a threat," said Putin.
On Tuesday, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov once again criticized the military presence of Western states on the Russian border.
It is a fact that countries are bringing troops and military equipment in large numbers from overseas "to our borders" and that the USA "has circled us on all sides with its military bases".
These "facts" "most likely every schoolchild knows," he said, according to the Tass state agency.
Nevertheless, hysteria is constantly being fueled.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently accused the Kremlin of planning a coup.
Moscow immediately rejected Zelenskyi's remarks.
svs / dpa / Reuters
