Minsk

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on on Feb. 12 accused the United States of seeking to provoke a conflict in Ukraine, during a call with his US counterpart Antony Blinken, the Russian foreign ministry said.

Hungary will not allow the deployment of additional forces on its territory, because the national army is capable of providing national security in the midst of tensions around Ukraine, said the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pter Szijjrt.

The Russian and Belarusian armies started ten-day maneuvers in Belarus today, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced. This is happening at a time of heightened tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine, according to world agencies.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Feb. 7 had a phone conversation and discussed regional developments, particularly the tension between Russia and Ukraine.

Stoltenberg thanked Erdoğan for his "active support" and "personal engagement to find a political solution" to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine tension.

The arrival of the heaviest military equipment in the West will herald the Polish government's pledge from July 2021 to "radically increase" the country's defence capabilities and to expand the Polish Armed Forces to a staggering 300,000 personnel - a combination of the regular professional army and part-time volunteer Territorial Defence Force, which was created in 2017.

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said today that Minsk had absolutely no interest in war and that conflict could only erupt if Belarus or its close ally Russia were directly attacked, Reuters reported.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will visit Ukraine on Feb. 3 as part of efforts to calm down tension due to the Russian confrontation in eastern Ukraine.

China has told the United States it wants to keep all countries involved in the crisis in Ukraine calm and avoid escalating tensions, while Washington has called for de-escalation and warned of security and economic risks in the event of Russian aggression, Reuters reports.

Within the scope of mediation efforts, Ankara has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Turkey for a face-to-face meeting amid rising tension in the region, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Jan. 20.

He said that the population in the war-torn east of Ukraine, a zone that is currently at the center of new tensions between Moscow and the West, was affected by "Russophobia", which, in his words, is "the first step towards genocide".