Ukraine Says Russia Will Soon Have Over 120,000 Troops on Its Borders

Russia will soon have more than 120,000 troops on Ukraine's border, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Tuesday, calling for new Western economic sanctions to deter Moscow from "further escalation".

Washington and NATO have been alarmed by the large build-up of Russian troops near Ukraine and in Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Western officials say the concentration of forces is now larger than during that annexation. The figure given by Kuleba is higher than Ukraine's previous estimate of 80,000 Russian troops, of which 50,000 were new deployments.

"Russian troops continue to arrive in close proximity to our borders in the northeast, in the east and in the south. In about a week, they are expected to reach a combined force of over 120,000 troops," Kuleba told an online news conference.