Russo-Ukrainian War

The statement reads that the total number of Russian troops stationed on the borders of Ukraine and Crimea includes up to 110.000 soldiers, up to 1.300 tanks, 3.700 armored vehicles, up to 1.300 artillery systems, including up to 380 missile systems.

Russia said it will begin pulling thousands of troops back from areas near the Ukrainian border starting Friday, in a step that could calm tensions with the West that have surged in recent weeks.

The military units will return to their bases by May 1, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Thursday in Crimea, where he's on a visit to review maneuvers.

In response, the Ukrainian defence ministry has called on reservist soldiers to attend training sessions and has conducted defensive military drills near Crimea. Kyiv says that 28 of its soldiers have already been killed this year.

There is a "low to medium" risk that Russia will invade Ukraine over the next few weeks, the top U.S. general in Europe said on Thursday, in the first such military assessment amid mounting concern about Russian troop movements toward Ukraine's borders.

Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper says the United States should deploy more troops along the Black Sea in Bulgaria and Romania to deter potential aggression from Russia as tensions between Moscow and Washington heat up.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy held talks with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Istanbul on April 10, amid tensions between Kyiv and Moscow over a long-running conflict in Ukraine's eastern Donbass region.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will visit eastern Ukraine on Thursday to assess the situation in the region following a rise in tension with Russia over a long-running conflict.

Russia has upped its saber rattling in Eastern Europe and the Arctic, a move that has put the Biden administration on alert.

In the past two weeks, Moscow has moved to test Washington and its allies on land, in the air and at sea with a buildup of military equipment in eastern Ukraine, military flights near Alaskan airspace and submarine activity in the Arctic.

Russia warned on April 1 that a serious escalation in the conflict in Donbass could "destroy" Ukraine as NATO voiced concern over what it said was a big Russian military build-up near eastern Ukraine.

Permanent representatives of the 27 member states of the European Union agreed on a six-month extension of economic sanctions against Russia, which expire on January 31, 2021, a source in the delegation of one of the European countries in the EU Council told TASS.

"Yes, the ambassadors have just agreed to extend the restrictive measures until July 31, 2021," the source said.