Kamala Harris: USA very concerned about Poland-Belarus situation

"On the issue of Belarus and what is happening at the border with Poland, we are very concerned about that and closely paying attention to it," Harris said at a press conference in Paris. "The Lukashenko regime, I believe is engaged in very troubling activity. It is something that I discussed with President Macron, and the eyes of the world and its leaders are watching what is happening there," she added.

The European Union has accused Belarus of mounting a "hybrid attack" on the bloc by flying in thousands of migrants, mainly from the Middle East, and pushing them to try to cross illegally into Poland. It is gearing up to impose new sanctions on Minsk. Neighbours of Belarus have expressed concern that the crisis could escalate into a military confrontation. Belarus is a close ally of Moscow. President Alexander Lukashenko said this week he could cut off Russian gas supplies to Europe through pipelines over Belarus. But the Kremlin appeared to distance itself from that threat on Friday, saying Russia had not been consulted before Lukashenko's remarks and would meet all gas delivery contracts.

Belarusian and Russian paratroopers staged joint drills on Friday near the Polish and Lithuanian borders, during a standoff between Belarus and the EU over migrants camped in freezing forests at the frontier. The exercise at the Gozhsky training ground involved airborne units landing and carrying out combat training, including capturing and holding a bridgehead and searching and destroying enemy targets, the Belarusian defence ministry said. Russia's defence ministry confirmed that its paratroopers were taking part in the exercise. Both countries said troops would return to bases when the drills were over. The drills involved Russian Ilyushin Il-76 military transport planes and helicopters of the Belarusian Air Force, Minsk said in a statement circulated on social media.

"We will remain vigilant against the risk of further escalation and provocation by Belarus at its borders with Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, and will continue to monitor the implications for the security of the alliance," the North Atlantic Council, representing the alliance's member states, said in a statement.

"NATO allies call on Belarus to cease these actions, to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, and to abide by international law."

Washington has raised concerns about a potential Russian attack on Ukraine with its European Union allies, the Bloomberg news agency reported a day earlier. The report cited potentially suspicious troop movements inside Russia as being one of the reasons for U.S. concern. The Kremlin said it was up to Moscow alone where it deployed its own forces within its own borders. "Such headlines do nothing more than pointlessly and groundlessly fuel tensions. Russia does not pose a threat to anyone," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call. Washington has publicly said it is concerned by "unusual Russian military activity" near Russia's border with Ukraine. Peskov said such concerns were wide of the mark. "We have repeatedly said that the movement of our armed forces on our territory should not be a cause for concern," Peskov said.

Russia's Ministry of Defence said it had detected six flights by NATO spy planes in airspace over the Black Sea, part of what it described as intensifying air reconnaissance by Western military aircraft. The Russian military also said it was tracking U.S. naval ships in the Black Sea and accused Washington of studying the region as a potential theatre of war. "We regard the aggressive U.S. military activity in the Black Sea region as a threat to regional security and strategic stability," the military said in a statement. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and says the waters around it belong to Moscow now despite most countries continuing to recognise the peninsula as Ukrainian. Russian-backed separatists took control of Ukraine's eastern Donbass region that same year and soldiers on both sides continue to be regularly killed in the conflict there.