RUSSIA AMASSING TROOPS ON BORDER

Russia will soon have more than 120,000 troops on Ukraine's border, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Tuesday, calling for new Western economic sanctions to deter Moscow.

Washington and NATO have been alarmed by the buildup of Russian troops near Ukraine and in Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Western officials say the concentration is now larger than during that annexation. The figure given by Kuleba is higher than Ukraine's previous estimate of 80,000 Russian troops.

“Russian troops continue to arrive in close proximity to our borders in the northeast, in the east and in the south. In about a week, they are expected to reach a combined force of over 120,000 troops,” Kuleba told an online news conference.