WASHINGTON, 03 December 2021, (TON): The United States urged Russia to pull back its troops from the Ukrainian border, warning that a Russian invasion would provoke sanctions that would hit Moscow harder than any imposed until now.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “we don’t know whether President (Vladimir) Putin has made the decision to invade. We do know that he is putting in place the capacity to do so on short order should he so decide.”

Blinken was speaking in the Latvian capital Riga after conferring with foreign ministers from Nato and Ukraine “should Russia follow the path of confrontation, when it comes to Ukraine, we’ve made clear that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of high impact economic measures that we have refrained from pursuing in the past.”

Russia seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 but denies aggressive intent in the current crisis and says it is responding to threatening behaviour by Nato and Ukraine.

The Kremlin said it feared Ukraine was gearing up to try to recapture by force areas controlled by pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region in the east of the country - something Kiev denies and accused it of “very dangerous adventurism”.

It said “Russia could not take any steps to de-escalate because of a large concentration of Ukrainian forces close to the border.”