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 the European expansion of Nato – the Western military alliance.
The US and its allies accuse Russia of planning to invade 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”.
Meanwhile, Spanish newspaper El Pais has released what it says are confidential documents the US and Nato sent to Russia last week – including offers of talks on cutting back on nuclear weaponry and trust-building measures in exchange for reducing tensions over Ukraine.
A Nato official told the BBC the alliance never comments on alleged leaks. President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was aware of the report, but that they did not publish it and did not want to comment on it, according to AFP news agency.
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.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky however 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”.
