The United States has started sending about 2,000 soldiers to Europe on what it calls a mission to reassure Nato allies amid fears of a new Russian attack on Ukraine, but which the Kremlin says will only fuel tension and may prompt a response from Moscow.
Of the soldiers who began flying out from Fort Bragg in North Carolina on Thursday, 1,700 are scheduled to go to Poland and 300 to Germany, from where another 1,000 US troops are expected to transfer to Romania.
The Pentagon says the temporary deployment is a response to Russia’s build-up of some 100,000 troops close to the borders of Ukraine, which has alarmed Nato member states in eastern Europe; no US troops are being sent to Ukraine, however.
"We keep calling on our US counterparts to stop fuelling tensions in the European continent. Regrettably, the Americans keep doing that," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
“And, in this case, we are not talking simply about provocative statements that a war will happen soon ... We are talking specifically about sending US soldiers to European countries near our borders,” he added.
“Obviously, these are not steps aimed at de-escalation; on the contrary, their actions lead to escalation of these tensions.”
Mr Peskov said Russia's concern over the US deployment was "totally understandable, totally justified; and any measures taken by Russia to ensure its own security and its own interests are just as explainable and understandable".
The US and Britain have accelerated deliveries of arms and ammunition to Ukraine in recent weeks and warned that Russia appears to be planning a new attack on the country where it annexed Crimea in 2014 and started a war in the eastern Donbas region that has now killed 14,000 people.
Russia denies having any such plans but has threatened to reply with “military-technical” means if the West fails to meet its sweeping security requests; the US and Nato have already rejected the main demands and the Kremlin has complained that its interests are being “ignored”.
On Thursday US officials claimed they have evidence of a Russian plan to make a “very graphic” fake video of a Ukrainian attack on Russian territory as a pretext for an invasion.
The alleged plot would involve using corpses, footage of blown-up buildings, fake Ukrainian military hardware, Turkish-made drones and actors playing the part of Russian-speaking mourners. “We don’t know definitively that this is the route they are going to take, but we know that this is an option under consideration,” the deputy national security adviser, Jonathan Finer, told MSNBC.
Belarus build-up
An estimated 30,000 Russian troops and high-tech weaponry are also in Belarus, a close Kremlin ally to the north of Ukraine, in what Nato calls the biggest such deployment there since the cold war.
Leaders of several European countries have visited Ukraine in recent days to express support for its embattled government, and on Thursday Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan flew into Kyiv.
The two countries signed a raft of agreements, including a free-trade deal, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy welcomed his guest's "initiative to become a mediator between Ukraine and Russia on the way to ending the war".
They did not give any details of what Mr Erdogan’s role could be, however.
The two leaders also hailed growing defence co-operation between their states, through which Turkey has sold advanced military drones to Kyiv and is expected to establish a factory to build the aircraft in Ukraine.
Turkey also has traditionally close ties with the Crimean Tatar community, and Mr Erdogan said "we continue to support Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, including Crimea". Additional reporting: Guardian
