Moscow ready for security talks with West

But dialogue must factor in Russia's key demands, foreign minister says

Russia's foreign minister said on Wednesday that his country is willing to engage in security talks with the West provided that Moscow's demands are not brushed aside.

Sergey Lavrov was commenting in response to an offer from the West for talks to cover certain security issues. He insisted that they could take place only in the context of Moscow's key demands, such as a halt to NATO's eastward expansion.

On the same day that Russia's foreign ministry criticized Western media for trying to trigger a war in Ukraine, the foreign minister set out Russia's position on the West's talks offer at a news conference.

"We believe it's a positive step and will be ready for this dialogue but not at the expense of clarification of the principled issues of our position, which concern the need to put a stop to NATO's headlong expansion to the east and look for other ways of providing security for all the Euro-Atlantic countries," he told reporters.

In particular, Lavrov referred to a proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin that a moratorium be declared on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles in Europe, along with other initiatives.

On Thursday, he also said that Russia and Belarus will end their joint military drills on Sunday as previously planned, addressing Western concerns that Russian troops may stay in Belarus for a longer time.

Earlier on Thursday, about 10 convoys of Russian troops left Crimea after completing drills there, the RIA news agency quoted Russia's defense ministry as saying.

However, the United States suspects Moscow has increased its military presence on the Ukrainian border, a senior official in the administration of US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday.

The official did not provide details or evidence to back up the claim, according to Reuters. At a news briefing on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the Western media had gone to great lengths to trigger a war in Ukraine, but their reports have nothing to do with reality.

"Possibly, their pages were scenes of ferocious battles, but all this has nothing to do with the reality," Zakharova said. "In the previous days no war happened, but they don't get upset and keep waiting for it with a tenacity worthy of a better occasion."

Zakharova said that Russia and Ukraine, while adhering to fundamentally different views on many issues, state there are no facts indicating preparations for an invasion.

According to a report by Agence France-Presse, hundreds of US paratroopers landed at a Polish airport near the Ukrainian border on Wednesday as part of a deployment of several thousand to bolster NATO's eastern flank.

The arrivals will bring the US troop presence in Poland to around 10,000 on rotation.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, who hosted a meeting of the alliance's defense ministers in Brussels, dismissed suggestions that the threat on the border had diminished, and said NATO's doors will remain open for Ukraine.

In response, Zakharova said: "Moscow will no longer take seriously any statements by Stoltenberg."

Ukrainian Defense Minister Olexiy Reznikov said on Wednesday that the situation on Ukraine's borders remains stable.

"This morning, as every day, I received another summary with figures and facts, and they are fully consistent with our forecasts, and they do not contain anything unexpected," Reznikov was quoted by the Ukrinform news agency as saying.

Beyond the region, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro pledged a "powerful military cooperation" with Russia following high-level discussions between officials on Wednesday.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was expected to speak with Putin as early as Thursday night, a government source said. Kishida, in talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky two days earlier, said Japan is ready to extend at least $100 million to the country.

US Vice-President Kamala Harris will meet Zelensky and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz among other world leaders during a visit to the Munich Security Conference this week, senior administration officials said on Wednesday.

Agencies and Xinhua contributed to this story.