Russia-Ukraine updates: US to ban Russian carriers from its airspace

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Friday that the situation in eastern Ukraine is escalating, amid fears Moscow is seeking a pretext to attack its ex-Soviet neighbour.

"Unfortunately, right now we are seeing, on the contrary, an escalation of the Donbas situation," Putin said at a joint press conference in Moscow on Friday, following a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Putin reiterated Russia's demand that the Ukrainian government engage in direct talks with the Russia-backed separatists in Donbas, a breakaway region of southeastern Ukraine.

"All Kyiv has to do is sit down at the negotiating table with Donbas representatives and agree on the political, military, economic and humanitarian measures to end the conflict," he said. "The sooner it happens the better.”

Russia has demanded for years that Kyiv negotiate with the separatists directly, but Ukraine has always refused because it views them as Kremlin puppets and it would legitimize Moscow's false narrative that the ongoing conflict is exclusively a civil war and does not involve Russia.

Putin also stated that the United States and other members of NATO "are not disposed to properly accept" Russia's key demands for security guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO and that the military alliance pull its troops back from Eastern Europe. He said Moscow will not accept talking about the other proposals the U.S. has put forward without discussing these top requests.

"We are prepared to follow a negotiating track, on the condition that all aspects are considered in a package, not separately from Russia's principal proposals, whose implementation is an unconditional priority for us," he told reporters.

Putin also said he "paid no attention" to the reports in Western media of Feb. 16 being the alleged date of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine that U.S. officials had given, calling it a "hoax."

"I honestly just didn't pay attention to it. There are plenty of hoaxes. Constantly reacting to them is more trouble than it's worth," he added. "We do whatever we see fit and will do so further down the road. Of course, we watch what is going on in the world and around us. But we have clear and comprehensible guidelines that correspond with the national interests of the people of Russia and the Russian state."

Meanwhile, Lukashenko insisted that neither Belarus or Russia want a war and blamed the current tensions on the West. He said the massive joint military exercises currently being held in Belarus with Russia are directed at reinforcing their borders due to "growing military danger," which he claimed was caused in part by Western countries "pumping Ukraine" with weapons.

"With the military danger growing on our borders and Ukraine being pumped with weapons, Belarus and Russia are forced to look for appropriate ways to repel potential attacks," Lukashenko told reporters.

But the Belarusian leader also warned that, for the first time in decades, Europe is on the edge of a conflict that could "draw in almost the entire continent."

"You see that it does not depend even on our neighbors, including Ukraine, anymore. It is also obvious to you who the exacerbation of tensions near our borders depends on," Lukashenko said. "For the first time in decades, we have ended up on the verge of a conflict, which, unfortunately, is capable of drawing in almost the entire continent, like a vortex."

"Today, we're witnessing, in all its glory, irresponsibility and, forgive my frankness, the stupidity of a number of Western politicians," he added, "and the behavior denying logic and reasonable explanations of the leaders of our neighboring states and their downright morbid desire to walk right on the edge."

-ABC News' Anastasia Bagaeva and Patrick Reevell

The United States is "deeply concerned" that Russia "has embarked on" the wrong path, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday.

Speaking to reporters at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Blinken said Russia has deployed "additional forces" near neighboring Ukraine, "including leading edge forces that would be part of any aggression." When asked about the reports of more shelling in eastern Ukraine, Blinken said it's "part of a scenario that is already in play" for Moscow to claim a pretext for invasion.

"Even as we are doing everything we possibly can to make sure that this diplomatic path, that this has to resolved -- differences have to be resolved through dialogue, through diplomacy," Blinken told reporters, "we are deeply concerned that that is not the path that Russia has embarked on and that everything we're seeing, including what you've described in the last 24 to 48 hours, is part of a scenario that is already in play of creating false provocations, of then having to respond to those provocations and then ultimately committing new aggression against Ukraine."

Still, Blinken said he remains "hopeful" that the threat of sanctions and the supply of military aid to regional allies from the U.S. and others "will have an impact."

-ABC News' Conor Finnegan

Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine have declared a mass evacuation of civilians, while accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of preparing to launch a full-scale invasion against the breakaway regions in the coming days.

Ukraine has immediately denied the claim, but the mass evacuation order is worrying as it raises the prospect the separatists may allege a Ukrainian offensive in the coming days that Russia would use as a pretext to attack its ex-Soviet neighbor.

Denis Pushilin, leader of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk in a breakaway region of southeastern Ukraine known as Donbas, delivered a public address to residents on Friday saying mass, centralized evacuations were now being organized, with women, children and the elderly going first.

Pushilin said the evacuation would be "temporary" and that Russia has agreed to provide evacuation centers in the neighboring Rostov region to house evacuees. The separatists' leader also called on all able-bodied men to take up arms.

"I again appeal to all men able to hold a rifle in their hands, to come to the defense of their land," Pushilin said in a televised address.

The announcement came amid a sharp escalation along the front line between Russia-backed separatist forces and Ukrainian government troops, with Ukraine accusing the separatists of unleashing a major bombardment in the past two days. Heavy firing has been reported since Thursday coming from the separatist areas, while the separatists have accused Ukrainian troops of firing on them.

-ABC News' Patrick Reevell

The United States believes Russia now has "probably" as many as 190,000 troops, including Russian-backed separatists forces, according to a U.S. envoy, in and around Ukraine amid fears that Russian capabilities of a full-fledged invasion continue to grow.

"We assess that Russia probably has massed between 169,000 to 190,000 personnel in and near Ukraine as compared with about 100,000 on January 30," Michael Carpenter, U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said in a statement Friday. "This estimate includes military troops along the border, in Belarus, and in occupied Crimea; Russian National Guard and other internal security units deployed to these areas; and Russian-led forces in eastern Ukraine."

Unlike this latest assessment, previous estimations by U.S. officials did not include separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.

"While Russia has sought to downplay or deceive the world about their ground and air preparations, the Russian military has publicized its large-scale naval exercises in the Black Sea, Baltic Sea and the Arctic," Carpenter said. "Russia has publicly said the Black Sea exercise alone involves more than 30 ships, and we assess that amphibious landing ships from the Northern and Baltic Fleets were sent to the Black Sea to augment forces there."

The OSCE is a Cold War-era European security forum that has deployed a war monitor in eastern Ukraine for years and hosted talks on the current crisis with Russia. Its foundational documents have been used selectively by Moscow to paint Ukraine and NATO as a threat to Russia's security, even as its envoy in Vienna has largely dismissed dialogue there.

Earlier this week, Ukraine requested an emergency OSCE meeting to demand Russia explain its massive military buildup after Moscow ignored Kyiv's inquiry. Russia skipped Wednesday's session just as it did Friday's, where Carpenter delivered these remarks.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told his country's parliament Friday that they assess Russia has about 149,000 troops near their borders.

-ABC News Conor Finnegan and Cindy Smith