Russia has warned it will resort to 'military means' if the West does not bow to its demands over Ukraine, after NATO's chief said there is 'a real risk for armed conflict.'
Meeting senior Kremlin envoys at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Western ambassadors unanimously rejected Moscow's demands for a guarantee that Ukraine will never be admitted to the group.
The Kremlin also demanded that NATO rule out allowing Finland or Georgia to join the alliance, and for NATO to pull back from the ex-Soviet states that were brought into the group in 1997 - eight years after the Berlin wall fell.
Meanwhile, the European Union's foreign policy chief said on Thursday that Europe had received assurances from the United States that nothing will be agreed with Russia without the bloc's involvement.
'With the United States over the last few days, we have had an extremely close coordination,' Josep Borrell told reporters ahead of an EU defence ministers meeting in western France.
'We have assurances that nothing will be decided or negotiated without close coordination with Europe and without the participation of the Europeans.'
Russia has warned it will resort to 'military means' if the West does not bow to its demands over Ukraine, after NATO's chief said there is 'a real risk for armed conflict.' Pictured: A still grab from a video showing Russia military exercises that were ramped up amid on-going talks
After the alliance refused to meet Russian demands, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned there was 'a real risk of a new armed conflict in Europe'.
'If Russia once again uses force against Ukraine and further invades Ukraine, then we have to seriously look into the need to further increase our presence in the eastern part of the alliance,' Mr Stoltenberg added.
With talks failing to reach a breakthrough in Brussels, Russia cranked up its war games with live fire exercises, some close to Ukraine's borders where it has an estimated 100,000 troops in forward positions.
The latest in a spate of Russian war games - seen on video - included tank, motorised rifle, reconnaissance and engineering units drills. These drills in the Moscow region involved more than 5,000 troops and 1,500 pieces of weaponry.
Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko warned that the Kremlin will use its armed forces if it fails to gain concessions from the West.
'We have a set of legal military-technical measures that we will apply if we feel a real threat to (our) security,' he said. 'And we already feel (it), if our territory is considered as an object for targeted strike weapons…
'Of course, we cannot agree with this. We will take all necessary measures to fend off the threat by military means if political means fail.'
Russian sniper exercises (pictured) took place in the Russian-controlled Transnistrian region of Moldova, which borders western Ukraine
The latest in a spate of Russian war games - seen on video - included tank, motorised rifle, reconnaissance and engineering units drills. These drills in the Moscow region involved more than 5,000 troops and 1,500 pieces of weaponry
But western ambassadors said Moscow would have no veto on Ukraine nor on any other country joining the alliance and warned it would pay a high price if it invaded.
'Russia most of all will have to decide whether they really are about security, in which case they should engage, or whether this was all a pretext, and they may not even know yet,' US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said.
Grushko - Sherman's opposite number - agreed there had been no breakthrough, and lamented that, between them, Russia and NATO have no 'positive agenda.'
'The conversation was quite frank, direct, deep, intense, but at the same time it revealed a large number of differences on fundamental issues,' he said.
Putin's government has demanded the West rule out accepting new members like Ukraine, Georgia or Finland on its eastern flank and wants limits on allied deployments in the former Soviet allies like Poland and the Baltic states that joined NATO after the Cold War.
The allies have threatened massive economic and financial sanctions against Moscow if its huge troop build-up on Ukraine's frontiers and in Russian-occupied Crimea turns into a new invasion.
Meeting senior Kremlin envoys at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Western ambassadors unanimously rejected Moscow's demands for a guarantee that Ukraine will never be admitted to the group.Pictured: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg talks to the press outside the Lycee Naval in Brest on Wednesday
Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko (pictured speaking on Wednesday) warned that the Kremlin will use its armed forces if it fails to gain concessions from the West
Russia has put intense pressure on Ukraine since 2014, after a revolution overthrew a government that had sided with the Kremlin against moving closer to Europe.
Russia has seized and annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea and Moscow backs an insurgency in eastern Ukraine in which more than 13,000 people have died.
Russia's massive troop build-up on Ukraine's borders has forced Washington to engage diplomatically - with bilateral security talks in Geneva on Monday, a NATO-Russia meeting on Wednesday and another planned at the OSCE in Vienna on Thursday.
But the Western allies have received no promise that
