Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has accused the US of trying to draw his country into a war in Ukraine.
He said America’s goal was to use a confrontation as a pretext to impose more sanctions on Russia.
Mr Putin also said the US was ignoring Russia’s concerns about Nato alliance forces in Europe.
The US and its Nato alliance partners accuse Russia of planning an invasion of Ukraine, something Russia has repeatedly denied.
On Tuesday US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted that the US was “committed to preventing a conflict that is in no one’s interest”.
In recent weeks Russia has moved about 100,000 troops – equipped with everything from tanks and artillery to ammunition and air power – to Ukraine’s border.
It comes eight years after the country annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimea peninsula and backed a bloody rebellion in the eastern Donbas region.
Moscow in turn accuses the Ukrainian government of failing to implement an international deal to restore peace to the east, where at least 14,000 people have been killed and Russian-backed rebels control swathes of territory.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Tuesday that a Russian invasion would “not be a war between Ukraine and Russia – this would be a war in Europe, a full-scale one”.
‘Are we going to fight with Nato?’
Speaking after talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Moscow, Mr Putin said: “It seems to me that the United States is not so much concerned about the security of Ukraine… but its main task is to contain Russia’s development. In this sense Ukraine itself is just a tool to reach this goal.”
Rivalry between Russia and the US, which still possess the world’s biggest nuclear arsenals, dates back to the Cold War (1947-89). Ukraine was then a crucial part of the communist Soviet Union, second only to Russia.
Mr Putin said the US had ignored Moscow’s concerns in its response to Russian demands for legally binding security guarantees, including a block on the Nato alliance’s further expansion to the east.
He suggested that if Ukraine were granted its wish to join Nato, it could drag the other members into a war with Russia.
“Imagine that Ukraine is a Nato member and a military operation [to regain Crimea] begins,” the Russian leader said. “What – are we going to fight with Nato? Has anyone thought about this? It seems like they haven’t.”
