Western leaders warned Russia not to consider shifting a country's national borders by force, highlighting that Moscow would pay a high political and economic price for any military intervention in Ukraine.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Russian President Vladimir Putin was wrong to seek justification for revising borders in history.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he had sent a letter to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov offering more talks to defuse the Ukraine crisis but warned Moscow of the dangers of making impossible security demands. "We are extremely concerned because we see that they continue to build up, they continue to prepare. And we have never in Europe seen since the end of the Cold War, such a large concentration of combat-ready troops," he said.
"Russia has made the issue of Ukraine's possible NATO membership a casus belli, which is a paradox because there is no decision on this on the agenda," Scholz said. "We will differentiate clearly between untenable demands and legitimate security interests."
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