Russia, Ukraine ramp up military drills at border

Russia and Ukraine held simultaneous military drills Wednesday as NATO foreign and defence ministers began emergency discussions on a massing of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border.

Washington and NATO have been alarmed by the large build-up of Russian troops near Ukraine and in Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and two U.S. warships are due to arrive in the Black Sea this week.

Russia — which said the U.S. naval move was an unfriendly provocation and warned Washington to stay far away from Crimea and its Black Sea coast — says the build-up is a three-week snap military drill to test combat readiness in response to what it calls threatening behaviour from NATO. It has said the exercise is due to wrap up within two weeks.

Ahead of the arrival of the U.S. warships, the Russian navy on Wednesday began a drill in the Black Sea that rehearsed firing at surface and air targets. The drill came a day after NATO Secretarygeneral Jens Stoltenberg called on Moscow to end its troop build-up.

In Ukraine, armed forces rehearsed repelling a tank and infantry attack near the border of Russian-annexed Crimea while its defence minister, Andrii Taran, told European parliamentarians in Brussels that Russia was preparing to potentially store nuclear weapons in Crimea.

Taran provided no evidence for his assertion but said Russia was massing 110,000 troops on Ukraine's border in 56 battalion-sized tactical groups, citing Kyiv's latest intelligence.

Fighting has increased in recent weeks in eastern Ukraine, where government forces have battled Russianbacked separatists in a sevenyear conflict that Kyiv says has killed 14,000 people.