US trying to draw Russia into war says Putin

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has accused the US of trying to draw his country into a war in Ukraine.

In his first significant comments on the crisis in several weeks, he said America's goal was to use a confrontation as a pretext to impose more sanctions on Russia.

He also said the US was ignoring Russia's concerns about Nato alliance forces in Europe.

Tension is high over a Russian troop build-up close to Ukraine's borders.

Russia has in recent weeks moved about 100,000 troops - equipped with everything from tanks and artillery to ammunition and air power - to Ukraine's border.

But Russia denies Western accusations that it is planning an invasion, nearly eight years after it annexed Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula and backed a bloody rebellion in the eastern Donbas region.

Moscow in turn accuses the Ukrainian government of failing to implement an international deal to restore peace to the east, where at least 14,000 people have been killed and Russian-backed rebels control swathes of territory.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Tuesday that a Russian invasion would "not be a war between Ukraine and Russia - this would be a war in Europe, a full-scale one".