Facing their biggest security challenge in years, NATO foreign ministers discussed how to react to Russia's annexation of Crimea and how to reassure the alliance's rattled eastern members in the face of a newly assertive Russia.
As the two-day meeting began today in Brussels, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization downplayed reports of a Russian troop pullback from border areas with Ukraine.
Russia's Defense Ministry yesterday said one battalion about 500 troops had pulled back.
"This is not what we have seen," NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters. "And this massive military buildup can in no way contribute to a de-escalation of the situation a de-escalation that we all want to see so I continue to urge Russia to pull back its troops, live up to its international obligation and engage in a constructive dialogue with Ukraine."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking to reporters in Berlin, echoed those comments.
"(Even if some troops left) it's certainly not the final step," she said. "The troop concentration on the Ukrainian border is very high."
An estimated 35,000 to 40,000 Russian troops equipped with tanks, other armored vehicles and fixed and rotary wing aircraft remained deployed near the border with Ukraine, a NATO military official told The Associated Press today, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.
The official described the Russian buildup as "a complete combat force" that was highly threatening to Ukraine.
The NATO meeting, which US Secretary of State John Kerry flew in from Israel to attend, was expected to agree on stepped-up security measures to reassure Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, including further increases in air patrols already being conducted by other NATO members over the Baltic Sea.
Ministers of the alliance's 28 member nations were also expected to formally end practical defense cooperation with Russia and decide on some form of assistance to Ukraine's government.
