Russia’s morve comes amid growing tensions between the United States and Russia, with the United States fearing that Moscow is planning to invade Ukraine.
Bart Gorman is second in command at the US Embassy in Moscow and holds an open visa. He has worked in Moscow for less than three years.
Washington has accused Moscow of misleading the world with false information, saying that instead of sending troops back to bases, Moscow has sent 7,000 more troops to Ukraine’s disputed border.
Tensions have risen since yesterday over the separation of Ukrainian forces in the east of the country from Russian-backed forces, with heavy shelling being blamed on both sides.
The US-NATO ally says it has not seen any sign of Russia’s promise to withdraw troops.
Lloyd Austin, the US secretary of defense at NATO headquarters in Brussels, said: “I’ve seen some of these troops near the border, we’ve seen them in warplanes.
“We saw in the Black Sea that they were intensifying their preparations and started storing blood. We have never seen such things happen for no reason. If you were doing it, you wouldn’t do it at all.
Russia responded by offering diplomacy to the United States to limit its deployment of missiles in Europe, ban military exercises and engage in other confidence-building measures.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blanken, chairing a UN Security Council meeting in New York and the subsequent Munich Conference for Germany, Russia responded after a long wait for US proposals on Ukraine and wider European security.
A senior State Department official said Russia had submitted the answers to US Ambassador to Moscow John Sullivan.
Ahead of a meeting of Western allies in Brussels, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said: “We have seen an increase of at least 7,000 troops in the 48 hours since the statement was made.
The British Minister of Armed Forces, James Happy, has denied the allegations in a statement issued Friday stating “Similar, baseless allegations concerning Russia’s intelligence have been made more than once.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said that Russia’s military and capabilities are enough to attack the whole of Ukraine after a brief warning.
“The fact that you are putting a combat tank on a train and moving it in any direction does not prove that the troops have withdrawn,” he said.
“We are very serious and we will face this threat at the moment,” he added.
Moscow has repeatedly said that some forces are returning to their bases, but an independent review has provided details of some of them.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement that Russian tanks and infantry units that had taken part in the exercises in the Krasnoyarsk and Bryansk regions were in Nizhny Novgorod, near the border with neighboring Ukraine. Returning to its permanent base in Nogorod.