WASHINGTON, Dec 1 – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet separately with his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts on Thursday on the margins of a meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, at a time of tension over Russian military deployments on Ukraine's borders.

A State Department official confirmed the meetings, which will happen on the sidelines of a minister-level meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, AP reported.

Blinken is to meet first with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and later with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Tensions over the Russian troop build-up along the border of Ukraine, whose government is seeking to align with NATO and the West, have been a focus of Blinken's weeklong Europe trip.

Russia has plans to take “significant aggressive moves” against Ukraine, Blinken has warned on Wednesday, as tensions between Washington and Moscow continue to mount before a top-level meeting this week.

After a meeting of NATO ministers in Riga, Latvia, Blinken said the United States was “deeply concerned by evidence that Russia has made plans for significant aggressive moves against Ukraine”.

Blinken told reporters the US did not know whether Russian President Vladimir Putin “has made the decision to invade” Ukraine, however. “We do know that he’s putting in place the capacity to do so on short order, should he so decide,” the top US diplomat said.

Earlier this week, Putin said at a forum in Moscow that any expansion of NATO military infrastructure in Ukraine was a red line he hoped would not be crossed. On Wednesday, the Russian president emphasised that the country would seek “reliable and long-term security guarantees”.

“In a dialogue with the United States and its allies, we will insist on working out specific agreements that would exclude any further NATO moves eastward and the deployment of weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to Russian territory,” Putin said.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv needed direct talks with Moscow to end the tensions and put a stop to the conflict in the country’s east.

Ukraine is not a member of NATO but Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on the transatlantic security alliance to put together a “deterrence package” and increase military cooperation with Ukraine to prevent Russian aggression.

Russian officials have previously said Moscow’s posture towards Ukraine is purely defensive and accused Kyiv of plotting to recapture by force areas held by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have denied the accusation.

On Wednesday, Blinken warned that President Joe Biden’s administration had made it clear to Russia that should it “follow the path of confrontation” with Ukraine, the US “will respond resolutely, including with a range of high-impact economic measures that we have refrained from pursuing in the past”.

He did not go into further details about what exact measures could be taken, but said they would have “far-reaching and long-lasting consequences”.

There is “tremendous solidarity” within NATO to pursue strong measures if Russia invades Ukraine, Blinken also said. “Should Russia reject diplomacy and reinvade Ukraine, we will be prepared to act.”

Meanwhile, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said his country would stand with Moscow in any conflict with Kyiv. “I will do everything to make Ukraine ours. It is our Ukraine,” he said. (ap/ez)